This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project
to make the world's books discoverable online.
It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject
to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books
are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that's often difficult to discover.
Marks, notations and other maiginalia present in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book's long journey from the
publisher to a library and finally to you.
Usage guidelines
Google is proud to partner with libraries to digitize public domain materials and make them widely accessible. Public domain books belong to the public and we are merely their custodians. Nevertheless, this work is expensive, so in order to keep providing tliis resource, we liave taken steps to prevent abuse by commercial parties, including placing technical restrictions on automated querying. We also ask that you:
+ Make non-commercial use of the files We designed Google Book Search for use by individuals, and we request that you use these files for personal, non-commercial purposes.
+ Refrain fivm automated querying Do not send automated queries of any sort to Google's system: If you are conducting research on machine translation, optical character recognition or other areas where access to a large amount of text is helpful, please contact us. We encourage the use of public domain materials for these purposes and may be able to help.
+ Maintain attributionTht GoogXt "watermark" you see on each file is essential for in forming people about this project and helping them find additional materials through Google Book Search. Please do not remove it.
+ Keep it legal Whatever your use, remember that you are responsible for ensuring that what you are doing is legal. Do not assume that just because we believe a book is in the public domain for users in the United States, that the work is also in the public domain for users in other countries. Whether a book is still in copyright varies from country to country, and we can't offer guidance on whether any specific use of any specific book is allowed. Please do not assume that a book's appearance in Google Book Search means it can be used in any manner anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liabili^ can be quite severe.
About Google Book Search
Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers discover the world's books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web
at|http: //books .google .com/I
DarvarD CoUeae Xibrar^
FROM
3^ — ■ f — -"Irt
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Q
THE
HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE
BY
JAMES BRYCE, B.C.L.
PBLLOW OP ORIBL COLLBOB, OXFORD
A NEW EDITION, REVISED
Tu regere imperio poptdos, Romomey memento
MACMILLAN AND CO. 1lon0on
M. DOOC. IiXVI.
r? ar-rrd O-^ejr- T.-hrair
%■< XC^'l .\ ^'°'^ "^® iOatate of
lOHBI, H.A., ■. PIOKABD HALL, AND H. LATHAX, X
t^.
PREFACE-
X HIS Essay was originally composed for the Arnold Historical Prize at Oxford, and afterwards rewritten for publication a year ago. The present edition has been revised throughout, and several new chapters have been inserted. An Index has teen added, and a Chronological Table of Emperors and Pppes prefixed. Care has been taken to make the refer- ences to authorities and the dates as accurate as possible, but as the author has been obliged to correct the proof-sheets under the constant pressure of other work, and at a distance from all books of reference, some errors may probably have crept in.
An apology may seem to be required for the un- familiar forms under which several proper names appear in the following pages. In some instances these forms are those which prevailed among us a century and a half ago*. Neither in these cases,
4c See upon this subject an Essay by Augustin Thierry, Sur la restUutUm des noma propree germaniques dans Vhistoire de France, in liis Collected Essays, Paris, 1843.
vi PREFACE.
however, nor In others where the same excuse cannot be pleaded, have such forms been used in the idea that it is now possible to change the established practice of English writers. But that which would be pedantic in ordinary composition may become useful or even necessary in treating of the details of a special subject. And as there are few things more important in mediaeval history than to dis- tinguish accurately the positions of the Latin-speaking and the German-speaking peoples at different epochs, so there is nothing which conduces more to such a distinction than the careful use of appropriate, and, if possible, contemporary forms of proper names.
Januaby ist, 1866.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. Introduction.
CHAPTEB 11. The Boman Empire before the Barbarian Invasions.
The Empire in the Second Century 5
Destruction of the Old Nationalities 6
Kise of Christianity 10
Its Alliance with the State 11
Its Influence on the Idea of an Imperial Nationality 13
CHAPTEB III. The Barbarian Invasions.
Halations between the Primitive Germans and the Bomans .... 16
Their Feelings towards Bome and her Empire 17
Belief in its Eternity 22
Extinction by Odoacer of the Western branch of the Empire . . 28
Theodoric the Ostrogothic King 30
Gradual Dissolution of the Empire 32
Permanence of the Boman Beligion and the Boman Law 33
CHAPTEB IV. Bestoration of the Empire in the West.
TheEranks 37
Italy under Greeks and Lombards 40
The Iconoclastic Schism 41
viii CONTENTS,
Alliance of the Popes with the Frankish Kings 43
The Frankish Conquest of Italy 45
Adventures and Hans of Pope Leo III 48
Coronation of Charles the Great 52
•
CHAPTER V* y Empire and FoUoy of Charles.
Import of the Coronation at Borne 57
Accounts given in the Annals of the time 59
Question as to the Intentions of Charlea 64
Legal Effect of the Coronation 68
Position of Charles towards the Church 71
Towards his Grerman Subjects 74
Towards the other Eaces of Europe 77
Greneral Vtew of his Character and PoMcy 78
CHAPTER VI. Carolingian and Italian Emperors.
Reign of Lewis I 84
Dissolution of the Carolingian Empire 85
Beginnings of the German Kingdopi 87
Italian Eihperors 88
Otto the Saxon King 91
Coronation of Otto at Rome 95
CHAPTER VII. Y Theory of the Medisdval Empire.
The World Monarchy and the World Religion 99
Unity of the Christian Church 101
Influence of the Doctrine of Realism 105
The Popes as heirs of the Roman Monarchy 107
Character of the revived Roman Empire Ill
Respective Functions of the Pope and the Emperor 112
Proofs and Illustrations 117
Interpretations of Prophecy 122
Two remarkable Pictures 126
CONTENTS, is
CHAPTER Vm. The Bomaa Bmpize mod the Gannaa Kingdom.
The German or East Frankish Monarchy 182
Feadalitjin Germany 134
Reciprocal Influence of the Roman and Teutonic Elements on
the Character of the Empire 188
CHAPTER IX. Saxon and Franconian Emperors.
Adventures of Otto the Great in Rome 146
Trial and Deposition of P<^ John XII 147
Position of Otto in Italy 152
His European Policy 158
Comparison of his Empire with the Carolingian 157
Character and Projects of the Emperor Otto III 159
The Emperors Henry II and Conrad II 168
The Emperor Henry III 166
CHAPTER X.
Struggle of the Empire and the Papacy.
Origin and Progress of Papal Power 168
Relations of the Popes with the early Emperors 170
Quarrel of Henry IV and Gregory VII 174
Gregory's Ideas 176
Concordat of Worms 179
General Results of the Contest 180
CHAPTER XI. The Emperors in Italy: Frederick Barbarossa.
Frederick and the Papacy 186
Revival of the Study of the Roman Law 190
Arnold of Brescia and the Roman Republicans 192
Frederick's Struggle with the Lombard Cities 194
His Policy as Grerman King , 197
y
<
X CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XII. Imperial Titles and Pretensions.
Territorial Limits of the Empire — Its Claims of Jurisdiction
over other Countries 202
Hungary 202
' Poland 203
Denmark 203
France 204
Sweden 204
Spain 205
England 205
Scotland 207
Naples and Sicily 207
Venice 208
The East 208
Kivalry of the Teutonic and B;^zantine Emperors 209
The Four Crowns 212
Origin and Meaning of the title ' Holy Empire' . / . . 219
CHAPTER XIII.
Fall of the Hohenstaufen.
Reign of Henry VI 224
Contest of Philip and Otto IV 225
Character and Career of the Emperor Frederick II 227
Destruction of Imperial Authority in Italy * 231
The Great Interregnum , 232
Rudolf of Hapsburg 234
Change in the Character of the Empire 2S15
Haughty Demeanour of the Popes 238
CHAPTER XIV.
The C^ermanio Constitution — ^the Seven Electors.
Germany in the Fourteenth Century 243
Reign of the Emperor Charles IV 247
Origin and History of the System of Election, and of the
Electoral Body 248
CONTENTS. xi
The Golden BuU 253
Remarks on the Elective Monarchy of Germany 266
Results of Charles IVs PoUcy 259
CHAPTER XV. The Umpire as an Intematioiial Power.
Revival of Learning 263
Beginnings of Political Thought 265
Desire for an International Power 267
Theory of the Emperor's Functions as Monarch of Europe .... 270
Illustrations 275
Relations of the Empire and the New Learning 277
The Men of Letters — ^Petrarch, Dante 280
The Jurists ^ 283
Passion for Antiquity in the Middle Ages : its Causes 286
The Emperor Henry VII in Italy 289
The J>c Monorchia of Dante 291
^CHAPTER XVI.
The City of Home in the Middle A^es.
Rapid Decline of the City after the Gothic Wars 301
Her Condition in the Dark Ages 303
Republican Revival of the Twelfth Century 306
Character and Ideas of Nicholas Rienzi 307
Social State of Mediaeval Rome 309
Visits of the Teutonic Emperors 312
Revolts against them 314
Existing Traces of their Presence in Rome 316
Want of Mediaeval, and especially of Gothic Buildings, in
Modem Rome 319
Causes of this ; Ravages of Enemies and Citizens. 322
Modem Restorations 328
Surviving Features of truly Mediaeval Architecture — the Bell- towers 326
The Roman Church and the Roman City 326
t« • i*inct the Revolution 330
yl
sii CONTENTS,
CHAPTEB XVII. The Benaissaaoe : Change in the Character of the Bmpire.
Weakness of Germany 334
Loss of Imperial Territories 336
Gradual Change in the Germanic Constitution 340
Beginning of the Predominance of the Hapsburgs 343
The Discovery of America 344
The Benadssance and its Effects on the Empire 845
Projects of Constitutional Reform 347
Changes of Title 349
CHAPTER XVITI. The Reformation and its Effects on. the Empire.
Accession of Charles Y 353
His Attitude towards the Raformation 354
Issue of his Attempts at Coercion 356
Spirit and Essence of the Religious Movement 358
Its Influence on the Doctrine of the Visible Church 361
How fiw it promoted Civil and Religious Liberty. '. 364
Its Effect upon the Mediaeval Theory of the Empire 366
Upon the Position of the Emperor in Europe 368
Dissensions in Germany 369
The Thirty Years' War 369
CHAPTER XIX.
The Peace of Westphalia : Last Stage in the Decline
of the Empire.
Political Import of the Peace of Westphalia ^ 872
Hippolytus a Lapide and his Book 374
Changes in the Germanic Constitution 375
Narrowed Bounds of the Empire 377
Condition of Germany after the Peace 378
The Balance of Power 381
The Hapsburg Emperors and their Policy 384
CONTENTS, xiii
The Emperor Charles VII 887
The Empire in its last Phase 889
Feelings of the German People 891
CHAPTER XX. Fall of the Xmpire.
The Emperor Francis II 893
Napoleon as the Kepresentative of the Carolingians 394
The French Empire 897
Napoleon's German Policy 398
The Confederation of the Rhine 400
End of the Empire 401
The German Confederation 402
CHAPTER XXI.
ConcluBion : General Summary.
Causes of the Perpetuation of the Name of Rome 405
Parallel instances : Claims now made to represent the Roman
Empire 406
Parallel afforded by the History of the Papacy 408
In how far was the Empire really Roman 413
Imperialism : Ancient and Modem 414
Essential Principles of the Mediaeyal Empire 417
Influence of the Imperial System in Germany 418
The Claim of Modem Austria to represent the Mediseval Empire 420
Results of the Influence of the Empire upon Europe 423
Upon Modem Jurisprudence 424
Upon the Developement of the Ecclesiastical Power 425
Struggle of the Empire with three Hostile Principles 428
Its Relation, Past and Present, to the Nationalities of Europe. 431
Conclusion : Difficulties caused by the Nature of the Subject.. 433
liv CONTENTS.
APPENDIX.
Note A. On the Burgundies 437
Note B. On the Relations to the Empire of the Kingdom of Denmark and the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein 440
Note C. On certain Imperial Titles and Ceremonies 442
Note D. Hildebert's Lines contrasting the Past and Present of Rome . . 448
INDEX 449
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
OF
EMPEKOES AND POPES.
|
Year of Accearion. |
Bishops of Rome. |
Emperors. |
Year of Accession. |
|
A.D. |
B.C. |
||
|
Augustus. |
27 A.D. |
||
|
Tiberius. |
14 |
||
|
Caligula. |
87 |
||
|
Claudius. |
41 |
||
|
42 |
St. Peter, (according to Jerome). |
||
|
Nero. |
54 |
||
|
67 |
LimiR, (according to Je- rome, Irenseus, Euse- bius). |
• |
|
|
68 |
Clement, (according to |
Galba, Otho, Vitellius, |
|
|
Tertullian and Rufi- |
Vespasian. |
68 |
|
|
nns). |
|||
|
78 |
Anaclett]fl(?). |
||
|
Titus. |
79 |
||
|
Domitian. |
81 |
||
|
91 |
Clement, (according to later writers). |
||
|
# |
Nerva. |
96 |
|
|
Trajan. |
98 |
||
|
100 |
EvaristuB(?). |
||
|
109 |
Alexander (?). |
||
|
Hadrian. |
117 |
||
|
119 |
Sixtns I. |
||
|
127 |
Telesphoras. |
* |
|
|
Antoninus Pius. |
138 |
||
|
139 |
HyginuB. |
||
|
' 142 |
PillR I. |
« |
• ••
XVlll
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF
|
Year of Accession. |
Bishops of Rome. |
Emperors. |
Year of Accession. |
|
A. D. |
A. D. |
||
|
157 |
Anicetus. |
||
|
Marcus Aiurelius. |
161 |
||
|
168 |
Soter. |
||
|
177 |
Eleutherius. |
||
|
- |
Commodus. |
180 |
|
|
Pertinax. |
190 |
||
|
Didius Julianus. |
191 |
||
|
Niger. |
192 |
||
|
193 |
Victor(?). |
Septimius Severus. |
193 |
|
202 |
Zephyrinus. |
Caracalla, Geta, Diadu- |
1 1 |
|
menian. |
211 |
||
|
Opilius Macrinus. |
217 ! |
||
|
Elagabalufl. |
218 |
||
|
219 |
Calixtus I. |
||
|
Alexander Severus. |
222 |
||
|
223 |
Urban I. |
1 |
|
|
230 |
Pontianus. |
||
|
235 |
Anterius or Anteros. |
Maximin. |
235 |
|
236 |
Fabianus. |
The two Gordians, Ma,xi- |
|
|
mus PupienuB,Balbinus. |
237 |
||
|
Gordian the Younger. |
238 |
||
|
Philip. |
244 |
||
|
Decius. |
249 |
||
|
251 |
Cornelius. |
Gallus. |
251 |
|
252 |
Lucius I. |
Volusian. |
252 |
|
253 |
Stephen I. |
iBmilian, Valerian, Gal- |
|
|
lienus. |
253 |
||
|
257 |
Sixtufl II. |
||
|
259 |
DionysiuB. |
1 |
|
|
Olaudius II. |
268 |
||
|
269 |
Felix. |
||
|
Aurelian. |
270 |
||
|
275 |
Eutychianus. |
Tacitus. |
275 |
|
Probus. |
276 |
||
|
Cams. |
282 |
||
|
283 |
Caius. |
Carinus, Numerian, Dio- |
|
|
cletian. |
284 |
||
|
Maximian, joint emperor |
|||
|
with Diocletian. |
286 |
||
|
296 |
Marcellinus. |
[305 (?) |
|
|
304 |
Vacancy. |
Constantius, Gulerius. |
304 (?) or |
|
Licinius. |
307 |
EMPERORS AND POPES.
XIX
|
Year of Aooession. |
Bishops of Rome. |
Emperors. |
Year of Accession. |
|
JL.H. |
A. D. |
||
|
308 |
Marcellusl. |
Maximin. Constantino, Galerius, Li- cinius, Maximin, Max- entius, and Maximian |
308 |
|
reigning jointly. |
309 |
||
|
310 |
Eusebius. |
||
|
311 |
Melchiades. |
||
|
314 |
Sylvester I. |
Constantino (the Great) |
1 |
|
alone. |
323 |
||
|
336 |
Marcus I. |
||
|
337 |
Julius I. |
Constantino II, Constan- |
1 |
|
tius II, Constans. |
337 |
||
|
352 |
Liberius. |
Magnentius. |
350 |
|
1 1 |
Constantius alone. |
353 |
|
|
1 356 |
Felix (Anti-pope). |
||
|
'. |
Julian. |
361 |
|
|
Jovian. |
363 |
||
|
Yalens and Yal^ntinian I. |
364 |
||
|
366 |
Damasus I. |
||
|
Gratian and Valentinianl. |
367 |
||
|
Valentinian II and Gra- |
|||
|
tian. |
375 |
||
|
Theodosius. |
379 |
||
|
384 |
Siricius. |
Arcadius (in the East), Monorius (in the |
|
|
1 |
West). |
395 |
|
|
398 |
Anastasius I. |
||
|
402 |
InTiocent I. |
||
|
TheodosiiiR II. (E) |
408 |
||
|
417 |
Zosimus. |
||
|
418 |
Boniface I. |
||
|
418 |
Eulalius (Anti-pope). |
||
|
422 |
Celestine I. |
||
|
Valentinian III. (W) |
424 |
||
|
432 |
Sixtus III. |
\ ^ |
|
|
440 |
Leo I (the Great). |
||
|
/ |
Marcian. (E) |
450 |
|
|
Maximus, Avitus. (W) |
455 |
||
|
Majorian. (W) |
455 |
||
|
Leo L (E) |
457 |
||
|
461 |
HilariuB. |
Severus. (W) |
461 |
|
Vacancy. (W) |
465 |
ba
XX
GHROHrOLOGIGAL TABLE OF
|
Year of Aeoessioii. |
Bishops of Roma, |
or Popes. |
Bmperon. |
1 Year of Aooessioii. |
|
▲. D. |
Anthemiiis. (W) |
A. D. 467 |
||
|
468 |
SimpUciua. |
Olybriufl. (WJ GlyoeritiB.(W) JuHuB NepoB. (W) Leo 11, Zeno, Badliscus |
472 478 474 |
|
|
(aUE.) |
474 |
|||
|
V |
Romulus AugustuluB. (W) (End of the Western Line in Bomulus Augustus. {Henceforth, till A.D.800, Emperors reigning at ConstatUinople') |
475 476) |
||
|
483 |
Felix 111 *. |
|||
|
Anastasius I. |
491 |
|||
|
492 |
Grelasius I. |
|||
|
496 |
Anastadiu TT. |
|||
|
498 |
Symmachus. |
|||
|
498 |
Laurentiua (Anti-pope). |
• |
||
|
514 |
Hormifldas. |
Justin I. |
518 |
|
|
528 |
John I. |
|||
|
526 |
Felix IV. |
Justinian. |
527 |
|
|
530 |
DioBOorus (Anti-pope). |
|||
|
530 |
Bonifietoe II. |
|||
|
532 |
John II. |
|||
|
535 |
AgapetuB I. |
|||
|
536 |
SilveriuB. |
|||
|
537 |
Vigilius. |
|||
|
555 |
Pelagius I. |
|||
|
560 |
John 111. |
Justin II. |
666 |
|
|
574 |
Beiledict I. |
|||
|
578 |
PelagiuB II. |
Tiberius II. Maurice. |
578 582 |
|
|
590 |
Gregory I (the |
Great). |
Phocas. |
602 |
|
604 |
SabinianuB. |
|||
|
606 |
Boniface III. |
|||
|
607 |
Boniface IV. |
Heradius. |
610 |
|
|
618 |
Bonifiehce V. |
|||
|
625 |
Monorius I. |
1 |
||
|
* Reckoning the Anti-pope |
Felix (A.D. 356) as Felix II. |
EMPERORS AND POPES,
TTl
|
Year of Aoo8Bu<m. |
Popw. |
EmpsTMs. |
Tear of Aocoflsioii. |
|
A.D. |
A.D. |
||
|
640 |
Severinus. |
||
|
640 |
John iV. |
||
|
•■ |
Constantine III, Hera- |
||
|
cleonasy Gonstans II. |
641 |
||
|
642 |
Theodoras I. |
||
|
649 |
Martia I. |
||
|
654 |
Eugenius I. |
||
|
667 |
VitaUanus. |
Constantino IV (Pogona- |
|
|
ttis). |
668 |
||
|
672 |
Adeodatas. |
/ |
|
|
676 |
Domnus or Donus I. |
||
|
678 |
Agatho. |
||
|
682 |
Leo II. |
||
|
683 (?) |
Benedict II. |
||
|
685 |
John V. |
Justinian II. |
685 |
|
685(1) |
Gonon. |
||
|
687 |
Paschal (Anti-pope). |
||
|
687 |
Sei^uB I. |
||
|
LeontiuB. |
694 |
||
|
Tiberius. |
697 |
||
|
701 |
John VI. |
• • |
|
|
705 |
John VII. |
Justinian II restored. |
706 |
|
708 |
Sisinnius. |
||
|
708 |
Constantine. |
||
|
Philippicus Bardanes. |
711 |
||
|
Anastasius 11. |
718 |
||
|
716 |
Gregory II. |
||
|
Theodosius III. |
716 |
||
|
Leo lU (the Isaurian). |
718 |
||
|
731 |
Gregory III. |
||
|
741 |
Zacharias. |
Constantine V (Coprony- |
|
|
mus). |
741 |
||
|
752 |
Stephen II. |
||
|
757 |
Paul I. |
||
|
768 |
Stephen 111. |
||
|
772 |
Hadrian I. |
||
|
Leo IV. |
775 |
||
|
Constantine Vl. |
780 |
||
|
795 |
Leoni. |
Deposition of Constan- |
|
|
tine VI by Irene. |
797 |
||
|
Charles I (the Great). |
800 |
||
|
{FoUomng henceforth the |
|||
|
new Western line,) |
XXll
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF
|
Year of Aooession. |
Popes. |
Emperors. |
Year of Accession. |
|
A. D. |
\ |
A. D. |
|
|
Lewis I (the Pious). |
814 |
||
|
816 |
Stephen IV. |
||
|
817 |
Paschal I. |
||
|
824 |
EugenhiH II. |
||
|
827 |
Valentinus. |
||
|
827 |
Gregory IV. |
1 |
|
|
Lothar I. |
840 |
||
|
844 |
Sergius II. |
||
|
842 |
Leo IV. |
||
|
Lewis 11. |
855 |
||
|
856 |
Benedict III. |
||
|
858 |
Nicholas I. |
||
|
867 |
Hadrian 11. |
||
|
872 |
John VIII. |
||
|
Charles U (the Bald). |
875 |
||
|
Charles III (the Fat). |
881 |
||
|
882 |
Martin II. |
||
|
884 |
Hadrian III. |
||
|
885 |
Stephen V. |
||
|
891 |
Formosus. |
Guido. |
891 |
|
Lambert. |
894 |
||
|
896 |
Boni£»ce VI. |
Amulf. |
896 |
|
896 |
Stephen VI. |
• |
|
|
897 |
Komanus. |
||
|
898 |
Theodore IT. |
||
|
898 |
John TX. |
||
|
Lewis {the Child).f |
899 |
||
|
900 |
Benedict IV. |
1 |
|
|
Lewis ITT (of Provence). |
901 |
||
|
903 |
Leo V. |
||
|
903 |
Christopher. |
||
|
904 |
Sergius III. |
||
|
912 (?) |
Anastasius ITT. |
Conrad I. |
912 (?) |
|
913 |
Lando. |
\ / |
|
|
914 |
John X. |
||
|
Berengar. |
915 |
||
|
Henry I (the Fowler). |
918 |
||
|
928 |
Leo VI. |
||
|
929 |
Stephen VII. |
||
|
931 |
John XT. |
||
|
936 |
Leo VII. |
Otto I (the Great). |
936 |
|
939 |
Stephen VIII. |
||
|
t T |
he names in italics are those of GK |
srman kings who never made any |
claim |
|
to the |
imperial title. |
EMPERORS AND POPES.
XXIU
|
, Year of Aocesston. |
Popes. |
Bmperon. |
Tear of Aooeasion. |
|
A. D. |
A. D. |
||
|
942 (?) |
Martin 11 J. |
||
|
946 |
Agape tns II. |
||
|
955 |
John XII. |
||
|
1 |
Otto I, crowned at Rome. |
962 |
|
|
963 |
Leo VIII. |
||
|
964 |
Benedict V (Anti-pope?). |
||
|
965 |
John XTTT. |
||
|
972 |
Benedict VI. |
||
|
1 |
Otto II. |
973 |
|
|
974 |
Boniface VJ1(?). |
||
|
974 |
DomnusII(?). |
||
|
974 |
Benedict Vll. |
||
|
983 |
John XIV. |
Otto ni. |
983 |
|
984 |
John X V. |
||
|
996 |
Gregory V. |
||
|
996 |
John XVI. |
||
|
1000 |
Sylvester II. j/ |
• |
|
|
i |
w |
Henry 11 (the Saint). |
1002 |
|
1003 |
John XV 11. |
||
|
1003 |
John XVin. |
||
|
1009 |
Sergius IV. |
||
|
1012 |
Benedict VIII. |
||
|
1024 |
John XIX. |
Conrad H (the SaUc). |
1024 |
|
1033 |
Benedict IX. |
||
|
Henry III. |
1089 |
||
|
1044 |
Sylvester (Anti-pope). |
||
|
1045 (?) |
Gregory VI. |
||
|
' 1046 |
Clement II. |
||
|
i 1048 |
Bamasns II. |
||
|
104f 1051 |
Leo IX. |
||
|
Victor II. |
|||
|
1 1 |
Henry IV. |
1056 |
|
|
1 1057 |
Stephen IX. |
||
|
1058 |
Benedict X. |
||
|
' 1059 |
Nicholas II. |
• |
|
|
1061 |
Alexander II. |
||
|
; 1073 |
Gregory VII (Hilde- |
||
|
brand). |
|||
|
1080 |
(Clement, Anti-pope). |
||
|
1086 |
Victor III. |
||
|
1087 |
Urban II. |
||
|
1099 |
Paschal II. |
||
|
1 |
Henry V. |
1106 |
|
|
, 1118 |
Gelasius II. |
||
|
1119 |
Calixtus II. |
XXIV
CHRONOLOOICAL TABLE OF
|
Yeuo{ Aooession. |
Popes. |
Emperors. |
Year of Aooession. |
|
A. D. |
(Gregory, Anti-pope>. |
A. D. |
|
|
1121 |
(Oelestine, Anti-pope). |
||
|
1124 |
Honorius II. |
||
|
Lothar 11 (the Saxon). |
1125 |
||
|
1130 |
Innocent II. (Anacletus, Anti-pope). |
• |
|
|
•Conrad III. |
1138 |
||
|
1143 |
Gelestine II. |
||
|
1144 |
Lucius II: |
||
|
1145 |
Eugenius III. |
||
|
Frederick I (Barbarosea). |
1152 |
||
|
1153 |
Anastasius 1 V . |
||
|
1154 |
Hadrian IV. |
f |
|
|
1160 |
Alexander 111. |
||
|
1160 |
(Victor, Anti-pope). |
||
|
1164 |
(Paschal III, Anti-pope). |
||
|
1168 |
(Galixtus, Anti-pope). |
||
|
1180 |
Lucius III. |
||
|
1185 |
Urban IIL |
||
|
1187 |
Gregory VIII. |
||
|
1187 |
Clement III. |
||
|
Henry VI. |
1190 |
||
|
1191 |
Celestine III. |
||
|
1198 |
Innocent III. |
♦Philip, Otto IV (rivals). |
1198 |
|
Otto IV. |
1208 |
||
|
Frederick il. |
1212 |
||
|
1216 |
Honorius III. |
||
|
1227 |
Gregory IX. |
||
|
1241 |
Celestine IV. |
||
|
1241 |
Vacancy. |
||
|
1248 |
Innocent IV. |
♦Conrad IV, »William, |
|
|
(rivals). |
1250 |
||
|
Interregwum. |
1254 |
||
|
1255 |
Alexander IV. |
♦Richard (earl of Corn- wall), ♦Alfonso (king |
|
|
of Castile), (rivals). |
1257 |
||
|
1261 |
Urban IV. |
||
|
1266 |
Clement IV. |
||
|
1269 |
Vacancy. |
||
|
1271 |
Gregory X. |
||
|
* |
Those marked with an asterisk w< |
ire never actually crowned at Ron |
le. |
EMPERORS AND POPES.
XXV
|
Tear of Acoeasion. |
Popes. |
Emperors. |
Tear of Accession. |
|
A. D. |
▲. D. |
||
|
♦Eudolf I (of Hapsburg). |
1272 |
||
|
1276 |
Innocent V. |
||
|
1276 |
Hadrian V. |
||
|
1277 |
John XX or Xlll. |
||
|
1277 |
Nicholas ni. |
||
|
1281 |
Martin IV. |
||
|
1286 |
Honorius IV. |
||
|
1289 |
Nicholas IV, |
||
|
*Adolf (of.Nassan). |
1292 |
||
|
1294 |
Celestine V. |
• |
|
|
1294 |
Boniface Vlll. |
||
|
I |
•Albert I. |
1298 |
|
|
. 1303 |
Benedict XL |
||
|
1305 |
Clement V. |
||
|
Henry VII. |
1308 |
||
|
Lewis IV. |
1814 |
||
|
(Frederick of Austria, |
|||
|
1316 |
John XXI or XXll. |
rival). |
|
|
1334 |
Benedict XII. |
||
|
1342 |
Clement VI. |
||
|
Charles iV. |
1847 |
||
|
1352 |
Innocent "Vl. |
(Gtlnther of Schwartz- burg, rivid). |
|
|
1362 |
Urban V. |
||
|
1370 |
Gregory XI. |
||
|
1878 |
Urban VI. Clement VH. |
*WenzeL |
1878 |
|
1389 |
Boni&ce TX. |
||
|
! 1394 |
Benedict ( A n ti-pope). |
||
|
I i |
♦Rupert |
1400 |
|
|
1404 |
Innocent Vil. |
||
|
1406 |
Gregory XTT. |
||
|
1409 |
Alexander V. |
||
|
1410 |
John XXTI or XXIII. |
Sigismund. ( Jobst of Moravia, rival). |
1410 |
|
1417 |
Martin V. |
||
|
1431 |
Eugene IV. |
||
|
1 1 |
^ |
♦Albert II. |
1438 |
|
1 |
Frederick III. |
1440 |
|
|
1455 |
CalixtnslV. |
||
|
1458 |
PiusH. |
||
|
1464 |
Paul II. |
||
|
1471 |
SixtuslV. |
||
|
« |
Hioae marked with an asterisk we |
sre never actually crowned at Rom |
le. |
XXVI
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF
|
Year of Aooeasion. |
Fopea, |
Emperon. |
Year of Aooession. |
|
A. D. |
A. I>. |
||
|
1484 |
Innocent Viil. |
||
|
1493 |
Alexander VI. |
^Maximilian I. |
1493 |
|
1503 |
Pius TTI. |
||
|
1503 |
Julius II. |
||
|
1518 |
Leo X. |
||
|
fCharles V. |
1519 |
||
|
1522 |
Hadrian Vi. |
||
|
1523 |
Clement VII. |
||
|
1534 |
Paul III. |
||
|
1550 |
Julius III. |
||
|
1555 |
Marcellus II. |
||
|
1555 |
Paul IV. |
||
|
^Ferdinand I. |
1568 |
||
|
1559 |
Piua iV. |
||
|
♦Maximilian II. |
1564 |
||
|
1566 |
Pius V. |
||
|
1572 |
Gregory XIII. |
||
|
•Rudolf IL |
1676 |
||
|
1585 |
Sixtus V. |
||
|
1590 |
Urban Vll. |
||
|
1590 |
Gregory AlV. |
||
|
1591 |
Innocent IX. |
||
|
1592 |
Clement VIII. |
||
|
1604 |
Leo XT. |
||
|
1604 • |
Paul V. |
||
|
•Matthias. |
1612 |
||
|
•Ferdinand II. |
1619 |
||
|
1621 |
Gregory XV. |
• |
|
|
1623 |
Urban VUl. |
||
|
«Ferd]nand TIT. |
1637 |
||
|
1644 |
Innocent X |
||
|
1655 |
Alexander VII. |
||
|
•Leopold I. |
1668 |
||
|
1667 |
element IX. |
||
|
1670 |
Clement X. |
||
|
1676 |
Innocent ^ J.. |
||
|
1689 |
Alexander VIII. |
||
|
1691 |
Innocent XII. |
||
|
1700 |
Clement XI. |
||
|
•Joseph I. |
1706 |
||
|
•Charles VL |
1711 |
||
|
1720 |
Innocent XlII. |
||
|
* |
Those marked with an asterisk in |
ne never actaaily crowned at Ron |
le. |
|
t |
Crowned Emperor, but at Bologn |
a, not at Borne. |
EMPERORS AND POPES.
XXYll
|
Teftrof AcoeasHMi. |
Popes. |
Emperws. |
Tear of Accession. |
|
A. D. |
A. D. |
||
|
1724 |
Benedict Alii. |
||
|
1740 |
Benedict XIV. |
||
|
•Charles VII. |
1742 |
||
|
•Francis I. |
1745 |
||
|
1758 |
Clement XII. |
||
|
♦Joseph II. |
1765 |
||
|
1769 |
Clement XIII. |
||
|
1775 |
Pius VI. |
||
|
♦Leopold II. |
1790 |
||
|
♦Francis 11. |
1792 |
||
|
1800 |
Piiw VTI. |
||
|
Abdication of Francis II. |
1806 |
||
|
1823 |
Leo XII. |
||
|
1829 |
Pins Vlll. |
||
|
1831 |
Gregory XVl. |
||
|
1846 |
PiusTX. |
||
|
* |
Those marked with aQ asterisk were never actually crowned at Rome. |
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
CHAPTER I.
INTBODTJOTOSY.
*•*/
Op those who in August, 1806, read in the English Chap. T. newsp^ers that the Emperor Francis II had an- """■ nounced to the Diet his resignation of the imperial crown, there were probably few who bethought them that the oldest political institution in the world had ended. Yet it was so. The Empire which a note issued by a diplomatist on the banks of the Danube extinguished, was the same which the crafty nephew of Julius had Won for himself^ against the powers of the East, beneath the cliffs of Actium ; and which had pr^erved almost unaltered, through eighteen centuries of time, and through the greatest changes in extent, in power, in character, a title and preten- sions from which aU meaning had long since departed. Nothing else so directly linked the old world to the new— nothing else displayed so many strange con- trasts of the present and the past, and summed up in those contrasts so much of European history. From the days of Constantino till far down into the middle
B
2 THE HOLY ROM AN EMPIRE,
Chap. I. ages it was, conjointly with the Papacy, the recog- nised centre and head of Christendom/ exercising over the minds of men an influence such as its ma- terial strength could never have commanded. It is of this influence and of the causes that gave it.^ower rather than of the external history of the Empire that the following pages are designed to treat. That history is indeed luTf^CtfTfSeresF and brilliance, of grand characters and striking situations. But it is a subject too vast for any single canvas. Without a minuteness of detail sufficient to make its scenes dramatic and give us a lively sympathy with the actors, a narrative history can have little value and still less charm. But to trace with any minuteness the career of the Empire, would be to write the his- tory of Christendom from the fifth century to the twelfth, of Germany and Italy from the twelfth to the nineteenth; while even a narrative of more re- stricted scope, which should attempt to disengage from a general account of the affairs of those countries the events that properly belong to imperial history, could hardly be compressed within reasonable limits. It is therefore better, declining so great a task, to attempt one simpler and more practicable though not necessarily inferior in interest ; to speak less of events than of principles, and describe the Empire not as a State but as an Institution, an institution created by and embodvmg awoMCftftl system ot ideas. In pur- suance oTsuch a plan, the forms which the Empire took in the several stages of its growth and decline •must be briefly sketched. The characters and acts
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 2
of the great men who founded, guided, and over- Chap. I. threw it must from time to time be touched upon. But the chief aim of the treatise will be to dwell more fully on the inner nature of the Empire, as the most signal instance of the fusion of Roman and Teutonic elements in modern civilization : to shew how such a combination was possible; how Charles and Otto were led to revive the imperial title in the West; how far during the reigns of their successors it pre- served the memory of its origin, and influenced the European commonwealth of nations.
Strictly speaking, it is from the year 800 a. n., when a King of the Franks was crowned Emperor of the Romans by Pope Leo III, that the beginning of the Holy Roman Empire must be dated. But in history there is nothing isolated, and just as to ojqplain a modern Act of Parliament or a modem conveyance of lands we must go back to the feudal customs of the thirteenth century, so among the institutions of the Middle Ages there is scarcely one which can be understood until it is traced up either to classical or to primitive Teutonic anti- quity. Such a mode of inquiry is most of all needful in the case of the Holy Empire, itself no more than a tradition, a fancied revival of de- parted glories. And thus, in order to make it clear out of what elements the imperial system was formed, we might be required to scrutinize the an- tiquities of the Christian Church ; to survey the constitution of Rome in the days when Rome was no more than the first of the Latin cities ; nay, to
B %
I: THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap.L travel back yet fiurther to that Jewish theocratic polity whose influence on the minds of the mediseval priesthood was necessarily so profound. Practically^ however, it may suffice to begin by glancing at the condition of the Roman world in the third and fourth centuries of the Christian era. We shall then see the old Empire with its scheme of absolutism fully matured ; we shall mark how the new religion, rising in the midst of a hostile power, ends by embracing^ and transforming it; and we shall be in a position to understand what impression the whole huge fabric of secular and ecclesiastical government which Boman and Christian had piled up made upon the barbarian tribes who pressed into the charmed circle of the ancient civilization.
CHAPTER IL
THE E0MA17 EMFIBJ: BEFORE THE INVASION OF THI^
BAEBABIANS.
That ostentation of humiKty, which the subtle Chap. Ii. policy of Augustus had conceived, and the jealous The Roman hypocrisy of Tiberius maintained, was gradually ^^^*^*^ dropped by their successors, till despotism became century. at last recognised in principle as the government of the Roman Empire. With an aristocracy de- cayed> a populace degraded, an army no longer re- cruited from Italy, the semblance of liberty that_ yet survived might be swept away with impunity. Republican forms had never been known in the pro- vinces at all, and the aspect which the imperial ad- ministration had originally assumed there, soon re- acted on its position in the capital. Earlier rulers had disguised their supremacy by making a slavish senate the instrument of their more cruel or arbitrary acts. As time went on, even this veil was with- drawn; and in the age of Septimius Severus, the Emperor stood forth to the whole Roman world as the single centre and source of power and political action. The warlike character of the Roman state was preserved in his title of General ; his provincial lieutenants were military governors; and a more terrible enforcement of the theoiy was found in his
6 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. ii. dependence on the army, at once the origin and support of all authority. But, as he united in him- self every fimction of government, his sovereignty was civil as well as military. Laws emanated from him; all officials acted under his commission; the sanctity of his person bordered on divinity. This increased concentration of power was mainly required by the necessities of frontier defence, for within there was more decay than disunion. I«w troops were quartered through the country : few fortresses checked the march of armies in the struggles which placed Vespasian and Severus on the throne. The distant crash of war from the Rhine or the Euphrates was scarcely heard or heeded in .the profound quiet of the Mediterranean coasts, where, with piracy, fleets had disappeared. No quarrels of race or religion dis- turbed that calm, for all national distinctions were Oblitera- being merged in the idea of a common Empire. The tianof gradual extension of Roman citizenship through the distinc- coloniay the working of the equalized and equalizings ttom. Roman law, the even pressure of the government on all subjects, the movement of population caused by commerce and the slave traffic, were steadily assimi- lating the various peoples. Emperors for the most part bom in the provinces cared little to cherish Italy or conciliate Rome. It was their policy to keep open for every subject a career by whose freedom they had themselves risen to greatness, and to recruit the senate from the most illustrious families in the cities of Gaul, Spain, and Asia. The edict by which Cara- calla extended to all natives of the Roman world the
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 7
rights of Roman citizenship^ though prompted by no chap. II. motives of kindness, proved in the end a boon. An- " ~ nihilating legal distinctions^ it completed the work which trade and literature and toleration to all beliefs but one were already performing^ and left^ so far as we can tell^ only two nations still cherishing a na- tional feeling. The Jew was kept apart by his re- ligion : the Greek boasted his original intellectual superiority. Speculative philosophy lent her aid to this general assimilation. Stoicism^ ¥rith its doc- trine of a universal system of nature^ made minor distinctions between man and man seem insigni- ficant: and by its teachers the idea of cosmopoli- tanism was for the first time proclaimed. Alexan- drian Neo-Flatonism^ uniting the tenets of many schools^ first bringing the mysticism of the East into connection with the logical philosophies of Greece, had opened up a new ground of agreement or con- troversy for the minds of all the world. Yet Rome's Tht Capi- commanding position was scarcely shaken. Of actual ^ ' power she had indeed but little. Rarely were her senate and people permitted to choose the sovereign : more rarely still could they control his policy; neither law nor custom raised them above other subjects or accorded to them any advantage in the career of civil or military ambition. As in time past Rome had sacrificed domestic freedom that she might be the mistress of others, so now to be universal, she, the conqueror, had descended to the level of the con- quered. But the sacrifice had not wanted its reward. From her came the laws and the language that had
8 THE HOLT MO MAN EMPIRE,
Chap. II. o;jrerspread the world : at her feet the nations laid the offerings of their labour: she was the head of the Empire and of civilization^ and in riches^ fame^ and splendour far outshone as well the cities of that time as the &bled glories of Babylon or Fersepolis. I>wcletian Scarcely had these slowly working influences brought tantine. " about such a Unity, when others began to threaten it. New foes assailed the frontiers ; while the loosening* of the structure within was shewn by the long strug- gles for power which followed the death or deposition of each successive Emperor. In the period of anarchy after the fall of Valerian, generals were raised by their armies in every part of the Empire, and ruled great provinces as monarchs apart, owning no allegiance to the possessor of the capital. The founding of the kingdoms of modem Europe might have been anti- cipated by two hundred years, had the barbarians been bolder, or had there not arisen in Diocletian a prince active and politic enough to bind up the frag- ments before they had lo3t all cohesion, meeting' altered conditions by new remedies. By dividing and localizing authority, he confessed that the weaker heart could no longer make its pulsations felt to the body's extremities. He parcelled out the supreme power among four persons, and then sought to give it a factitious strength, by surrounding it with an oriental pomp which his earlier predecessors would have scorned. The sovereign's person became more sacred, and was removed further from the subject by the interposition of a host of officials. The pre- rogative of Rome was menaced by the rivalry of
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 9
Nicomedia^ and the neai^r greatness of Milan. Con- Chap. it. stantine trod in the same path : extending the sys- tern of titles and functionaries^ separating the civil from the military^ placing counts and dukes along the frontiers and in the cities^ making the household larger, its etiquette stricter, its offices more important, , though to a Roman eye d^^raded by their attachment to the monarches person. The crown became, for the first time, the fountain of honour. These changes brought little good. Heavier taxation depressed the aristocracy a : population decreased, agriculture withered, serfdom spread : it was founcj more difficult to raise native troops and to pay any troops what- ever. The removal of the seat of power to Byzan- tium, if it perpetuated a part of the Empire, shook it as a whole, by making the separation of East and West inevitable. By it, Rome's self-abnegation, that she might Romanize the world, was completed ; for though the new capital preserved her name, and fol- lowed her customs and precedents, yet now the im- perial sway ceased to be connected with the city which had created it. Thus did the idea of Roman monarchy become more universal; for, having lost its local centre, it subsisted no longer historically, but, so to speak, naturally, as a part of an order of things which a change in external conditions seemed incapable of disturbing. Henceforth the Empire would be unaffected by the disasters of the city.
* The vidoua finanoial system taxes, and when there was a de- t£at pTOvailed forced the curi- ficit, to supply it from their own ales in each city to collect the incomes.
10 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. II. And though^ after the partition of the Empire bad been confirmed by Valentinian, and finally settled on the death of Theodosius^ the seat of goyemment was removed first to Milan and then to Bavenna^ neither event destroyed Rome's prestige, nor the notion of a single imperial nationality conunon to all her subjects. The Syrian, the Fannonian, the Briton, the Spaniard, still called himself a Boman^. ChrU' For that nationality was now beginning to be
t%an%iy, gqpported by a new and vigorous power. The Em- perors had, indeed, opposed it as disloyal and revo- lutionary : had more than once put forth their whole strength. to root it out. But the Empire's unity, and the ease of communication through its parts, had favoured the spread of Christianity : per- secution had scattered the seeds more widely, had forced on it a firm organization, had given it martyr-heroes and a history. When Constantine, partly perhaps from a genuine moral sympathy, yet doubtless far more in the well-grounded belief that he had more to gain from the zealous sympathy
' ^ See the eloquent passage in Claudian, In primum eontulatum SHlich(mi8t 129, sqq., from which the following lines are taken (150-60):—
** Hsec est in gremio victos quae sola recepit, Humanumque genus communi nomine fovit, Matris, non domlnae, ritu; civesque vocavit QuoB domuit, nexuque pio longinqua revinxit. Hujus pacificis debemus moribus omnes Quod veluti patriis regionibus utitur hospes : Quod sedem mutare licet : quod cemere Thulen. Lusus, et horrendos quondam penetrare recessus : Quod bibimus passim Bhodanum, potamus Oronten, Quod cuncti gens una sumus. Nee terminus unquam BomansB ditionis erit."
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 11
of its professors than he could lose by the aversion Chap. ii. of those who still cultivated a languid paganism^ took Christianity to be the religion of the Em- pire^ it was already a great political force^ able^ and not more able than willing, to repay him by aid and submission. Yet the league was struck in no mere mercenary spirit, for the league was inevitable. Its alliance Of the evils and dangers incident to the system then ^^te, founded, there was as yet no experience : of that antagonism betweeii Church and State which to a modem appears so natural, there was not even an idea. Among the Jews, the State had rested upon religion; among the Romans, religion had been an integral part of the political constitution, a matter far more of national or tribal or family feeling than of personal^. Both in Israel and at Rome the ming- ling of religious with civic patriotism had been har- monious, giving strength and elasticity to IJie whole body politic. So perfect a union was now no longer possible in the Roman Empire, for the new faith had already a governing body of her own in those rulers and teachers whom the growth of sacramentalism, and of sacerdotalism its necessary consequence, was making every day more powerfiil, and marking oflF more sharply from the mass of the Christian people. Since therefore the ecclesiastical organization could not be identical with the civil, it becaiQc its counter- part. Suddenly called from danger and ignominy to the seat of power, and finding her inexperience
^ In the Boman jurisprudence, %m solcrum is a branch of iu>$ ptAUcum*
12 THE HOLT BOM AN EMPIRE.
Chap. II. perplexed by a sphere of action vast and varied, the Church was compelled to firame herself upon the model of the secular administration. Where her own machinery was defective, as in the case of doctrinal disputes affecting the whole Christian World, she sought the interposition of the sovereign j in all else she strove not to sink in, but to reproduce for herself the imperial system. And just as vrith the extension of the Empire all the independent rights of districts, towns, or tribes had disappeared, so now the primitive freedom and diversity of individual Christians and local Churches, already circumscribed by the frequent struggles against heresy, was finally overborne by the idea of one visible catholic Churchy uniform in faith and ritual ; uniform too in her relation to the civil power and the increasingly oligarchical character of her government. Thus, under the combined force of doctrinal theory and practical needs, there shaped itself a hierarchy of patriarchs, metropolitans, and bishops ; their jurisdiction, although still chiefl^y spiritual, enforced by the laws of the State; their provinces and dioceses usually corresponding to the administrative divisions of the Empire. As no patri- arch yet enjoyed more than an honorary supremacy, the head of the Church — so far as she could be said to have a head — was virtually the Emperor J^ himself. The inchoate right to intermeddle in reli- gious affairs, which he derived from the office of Pontifex Maximus, was readily admitted; and the clergy, preaching the duty of passive obedience now as it had been preached in the days of Nero and
THJB BOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 13
Diocletian^, were well pleased to see him preside in Chap. II. councils, issue edicts against heresy, and testify even by arbitrary measures his zeal for the advancement of the faith and the overthrow of pagan rites. But though the tone of the Church remained humble, her strength waxed greater, nor were occasions want*- ing which revealed the future that was iij store for her. The resistance and final triumph of Athaaasius proved that the new society could put forth a power of opinion such as had never been known before : the abasement of Theodosius the Emperor before Ambrose the Archbishop admitted the supremacy of spiritual authority. In the decrepitude of old insti- tutions, in the barrenness of literature and the feeble- ness of art, it was to the Church that the life and feelings of the people sought more and more to attach themselves j and when in the fifth century the horizon grew blacky with. clouds of ruin, those who watched with despairing apathy the approach of irresistible foes, fled for comfort to the shrine of a religion which even those foes revered.
But that whioh we are above ajl concerned to re-r it embrace mark here is, that this Church system, demanding a ^^^'^ more rigid uniformity in doctrine and organization, imperial making more and more vital the notion of a visible * body of worshippers united by pguiicipation in the same sacraments^ maintained and propagated afresh
^ Tertnllian, writing eirc. A.D. qqein Dominns noster elegerit,
100, says ( "Sedquide^pampliuB Et merito dixerim, noster est
de reljgione atqiie pietate C^iris- magis Oeesar, ut a nostro Deo
tiana in imperatorem quern ne- constitutua/* — Apologet. cap, 34, cease est suspiciamus ut eum
-^
14 THE HOLT SOMAIT EMPIRE.
Chap. 11.1 the feeling of a single Boman people throaghont the world. Christianity as wellas civilization became conterminous with the Roman Empires
« See the book of Optatus, compUtus) The treatise of Op>
bishop of Milevita, Contra Dona- tatus is full of interest^ as shew-
iist(M. ** Non enim respublica est ing the growth of the idea of
in ecclesia. sed ecclesia in repub- the visible Church, and of the
lica, id est, in imperio Bomano, primacy of Peter's chair, as con-
cum super imperatorem non sit stituting its centre and repre-
nisi solus Deus :" (p. 999 of vol. senting its unity, ii. of Migne's Patrologice Ctirtus
CHAPTER III.
THE BAEBABIAN DrVTASIONS.
Upon a world so constituted did the barbarians Chap. III. of the North descend. From the dawn of history ^,^ ^^^_ they shew as a dim background to the warmth and lariana. light of the Mediterranean coast^ changing little \^hile kingdoms rise and fall in the South: only thought on when some hungry swarm comes down to pillage or to settle. It is always as foes that they are known. The Bomans never forgot the invasion of Srennus ; and their fears, renewed by the irrup- tion of the Cimbri and Teutones, could not let them rest till the extension of the frontier to the Rhine and the Danube removed Italy from immediate dan- ger. A little more perseverance under Tiberius, or again under Hadrian, would probably have reduced all Germany as far as the Baltic and the Oder. But the politic or jealous advice of Augustus' was fol- lowed, and it was only along the frontiers that Roman arts and culture affected the Teutonic races. Commerce was brisk ; Roman envoys penetrated the forests to the courts of rude chieftains ; adventurous barbarians entered the provinces, sometimes to ad-
* " Addiderat cozuiiliuni ooercendi intra tennnos imperii.*' — ^Tac. Ann, i. II.
16
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE,
Chap. III. mire, oftener, like the brother of Arminius^, to take service under the Roman flag, and rise to a dis- tinction in the legion which some feud denied them at home. This was found even more convenient by the hirer than by the employed; till by degrees barbarian mercenaries came to form the largest, or at least the most eflfective, part of the Roman armies. The body-guard of Augustus had been so composed; the praetorians weye generally selected from the bravest frontier troops, most of them Ger- man; the practice could not but iAcrease with the extinction of the free peasantry, the growth of villen- age, and the eflPeminacy of all classes. Emperors who were, like Maximin, themselves foreigners, en- couraged a system by whose means they had risen, and whose advantages they knew. After Constantine, the barbarians form the majority of the troops ; after Theodosius, a Roman is the exception. The soldiers of the Eastern Empire in the time of Arcadius are almost all Goths, vast bodies of whom had been settled in the country; while in the West, Stilicho can oppose Rhodogast only by summoning the Ger- man auxiliaries from the frontiers. Along with this practice there had grown up another, which did still more to make the barbarians feel themselves mem- bers of the Roman state. Whatever the pride of the old republic might assert, the maxim of the Empire had always been that birth and race should exclude no subject from any post which his abilities deserved. This principle, which had removed all obstacles from
8 Tao. ilnn. ii. 9.
Admitted to Roman titles and Jionourg,
THE HOL Y ROMAN EMPIRE. 1 7
the path of the Spaniard Trajan, the Pannonian Maxi- Chap. Ill min^ the Numidian Philip, was afterwards extended to the conferring of honour and power on persons who did not even profess to have passed through the grades of Roman service, but remained leaders of their own tribes. Ariovistus had been soothed by the title of Friend of the Roman People; in the third century the insignia of the consulship^ were conferred on a Herulian chief: Crocus and his Alemanni entered as an independent body into the service of Rome; along the Rhine whole tribes received, under the name of Laeti, lands within the provinces on condition of military service; and the foreign aid which the Sarmatian had proffered to Vespasian against his rival, and Marcus had indignantly rejected in the war with Cassius, became the usual, at last the sole support of the Empire, in civil as well as in external strife.
Thus in many ways was the old antagonism broken down— Romans admitting barbarians to rank and office, barbarians catching something of the man- ners and culture of their neighbours. And thus when the final movement came, and the Teutonic tribes slowly established themselves thrbugh the provinces, they entered not as savage strangers, but as colonists knowing something of the system into which they came, and not unwilling to be considered its mem- bers; despising the degenerate provincials who struck no bloW in their own defence, but ftdl of respect for
^ Of coiirse not the consulship itself, but the omammta con- »uZarta.
18
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Their fed ings to- wards the Boman Empire,
Chap. Ill, the majestic power whieli had for so many centuries confronted and instructed them.
Great during all these ages^ but greatest when they were actually traversing and settling in the Empire, must have been the impression which its elaborate machinery of government and mature civili- zation made upon the minds of the Northern in- vaders. With arms whose fabrication they had learned from their foes, these dwellers in the forest conquered well-tilled fields, and entered towns whose busy workshops, marts stored with the productions of distant countries, and palaces rich in monuments of art, equally roused their wonder. To the beauty of statuary or painting they might often be blind, but the rudest mind must have been awed by the massive piles with which vanity or devotion, or the passion for amusement, had adorned Milan and Ve- rona, Aries, Treves, and Bordeaux. A deeper awe would strike them as they gazed on the crowding worshippers and stately ceremonial of Christianity, so unlike their own rude sacrifices. The exclamation of the Goth Athanaric, when led into the market- place of Constantinople, may stand for the feelings of his nation: ^^ Without doubt the Emperor is a God upon earth, and he who attacks him is guilty of his own blood".''
The social and political system, with its cultivated language and literature, into which they came, would impress fewer of the conquerors, but by those few would be admired beyond all else. Its regular or-
^ Jomandes^ De Rebut OettcU, cap. a8.
r
-THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 19
ganization supplied wliat they most needed and eould Chap. III. least construct for themselves, and hence it was that the greatest among them wei^e the most desirous to preserve it. The Mongol Attik excepted; there is among these terrible hosts no destroyer; the wish i of each leader is to maintain the existing ^rder> to I spare life, to respect every work of skill and labour,
above all to perpetuate the methods of Bcmian ad- Tluirdesire ministration, and rule the people as the deputy ot ij^^^ successor of their Emperor. Titles conferred by him **<^- were the highest honours they knew : they were also the only means of acquiring something like a legal claim to the obedience of the subject, and of turning a patriarchal or miKtary chieftainship into the regular sway of an hereditary monarch. CiviliB had long since endeavoured to govern his Batavians as a Roman general J. Alaric became master-general of the armies of Ulyricum. Clovis exulted in the consulship ; his son Theodebert received Provence, the conquest of his own battle-axe, as the gift of Justinian. Sigis- mund the Burgundian king, created count and patrician by the Emperor Anastasius, professed the deepest gratitude and the firmest faith to that Eastern court which was absolutely powerless to help or to hurt him. '^ My people is yours,'^ he writes, " and to rule them delights me less than to serve you; the hereditary devotion of my race to Rome has made us account those the highest honours which your military titles convey ; we have always preferred what an Emperor gave to all that our ancestors could
} Tac. Bist* i. and iv. C %
20 THE HOL Y ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap, III. bequeath. In ruling our nation we hold ourselves but your lieutenants : you, whose divinely appointed sway no barrier bounds, whose blessed beams shine from the Bosphorus into distant Gaul, employ us to administer the remoter regions of your Empire : your world is our fatherland^/' A contemporary historian has recorded the remarkable disclosure of his own thoughts and purposes, made by on© of the ablest of the barbarian chieftains, Athaulf the Visigoth, the brother-in-law and successor of Alaric. ^^ It was at first my wish to destroy the Roman name, and erect in its place a Gothic empire, taking to myself the title and the powers of Ca&sar Augustus. But when experience taught me that the untameable barbarism of the Goths would not suffer them to live beneath the sway of law, and that the abolition of the institutions on which the state rested would in- volve the ruin of the state itself, I chose the glory of renewing and maintaining by Gothic strength the
^ " Vester quidem est populus orbis est. Tangifc Galliam suam
meus Bed me plus seirire vobis lumen ofientis, et radius qui illis
quamilliprseessedelectat. Traxit partibufi oriri creditur, hie re-
istud a proavis generis mei apud fiiiget. Dominationem vobis
vos decessoresque vestros semper divinitus praestitam obex nulla
animo Bomana devotio, ut ilia conoludit, nee ullis provinciarum
nobis magis claritas putaretur, terminis difiusio f elicium sceptro-
quam vestra per militise titulos ruin limitatur. Salvo divinitatis
porrigeret celsitudo : cunctisque honore sit dictum." — Letter
auctoribus meis semper magis printed among the works of A-
ambitum est quod a principibus vitus, Bishop of Vienne. (Migne's
sumerent quam quod a patribus Patrohaia, vol. Ux. p. 285.) attuUssent. Cumque gentem This letter, as its style shews,
nostram videamur regere, non is the composition not of Sigis-
aliud nos quam milites vestros mund himself, but of Avitus.
credimus ordinari. . . . Per nos But this makes it nowise less
administratis remotarum spatia valuable evidence of the feelings
regionum : patria nostra vaster of the time.
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 21
fame of Bome^ desiring to go down to posterity as the CttAP. III. restorer of that which it was beyond my power to re- place. Wherefore I avoid war and strive after peace^^^ Historians, have remarked how valuable must have been the skill of Roman officials to princes who from leaders of tribes were become rulers of wide lands; and in particular how indispensable the aid of the Christian bishops^ the intellectual aristocracy of their new subjects^ whose advice could alone guide their policy and conciliate the vanquished* Not only is this true ; it is but a small part of the truth ; one form of that manifold and overpowering influence which the old sjrstem exercised over its foes not lesd than its own children. For it is hardly too much to say that the thought of antagonism to the Empire and the wish to extinguifih it never crossed the mind of the barbarians™. The conception of that Empire was too universal^ too august^ too enduring. It was everywhere around them^ and they could remember no time when it had not been so. It had no asso- ciation of people ^or place whose fall could seem to
> **Itel0iTe Bolitus est (se, Atatil- sine quibttsrespttblica non eat res-
phus) 86 in primis ardeoter in- publica ; elegisse se saltern, ut
hiasse: iitobUteratoBomanomm gloriam sibi de restituendo in
nomine Bomanum omne solum integrum, augendoque Bomano
Gothorum imperium et fetceret et nomine Gotborum viribus quas-
vocaret : eaeetque, ut vulgariter reret, habereturque apud pos-
loquar, Gotbia quod Romania teros Romans restitutionis auc-
faisset ; fieretque nunc Ataul- tor postquam esse non potuerat
phus quod quondam Cssar An- immutator. Ob hoc abstinere a
gustuB. Atubimultaexperientia bello, ob hoc inhiare paci nite-
pTobavisset, neque Gothos ullo batur." — Orosius, vii. 43.
mode parere legibus posse propter ^ Atbaulf formed only to aban*
ef&enatam barbariem, neque rei- don it. publics interdici leges oportere
22 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. III. involve that of ihe whole fabric j it had that con-
nexion with the Christian Church which made it
all-embracing and venerable.
The hOUf There were especially two ideas whereon it rested^
^«y. and from which it obtained a peculiar strength and
a peculiar direction. The one was the belief that as
the dominion of Rome was universal . so must it be
II " ___
eternal. J^othing like it had been seen before. The empire of Alexander had lasted a short lifetime ; and within its wide compass were included many arid wastes^ and many tracts where none but the roving savage had ever set foot. That of the Italian ciiy had for fourteen :generations embraced all the most wealthy and populous regions, of the civilized world, and had laid the foundations of its power so deep that they seemed destined to last for ever. If Borne moved slowly for a time, her foot was always planted firmly : the ease and swiftness of her later conquests proved the solidity of the earlier ; and to her, more justly than to his own city, might the boast of the Athenian historian be applied : that she advanced farthest in prosperity, and in adversity drew back the least. From the end of the republican period her poets, her orators, her jurists, ceased not to repeat the claim of world-dominion, and con- fidently predict its eternity". The proud belief of his countrymen which Virgil had expressed —
n See, among other passages, by Mgi^i, Der FUrttenreUh ncieh
Tarro, JDe Utvgya Latino, iy. 34 ; dem Limeviller Prieden, The
Oic, Pro Domo, 33 ; and in the phrase *'urbs letema " appears
Corpus Juris CivUis, Dig. 1.5, in a novel issued by Yalentiniaik
17 ; 1. 1, 33 ; xiv. 2, 9 ; quoted IIL
i!nE BOLT ROMAN UMPIRE: 23
** HiB ego nee metas rerum, nee tempera pono ; ' Chap. III. Imperium sine fine dedi "—
was shared by the early Christians when they prayed for the persecuting power whose £dl would bring Antichrist upon earth. Lactantius writes: '^When Borne the head of the world shall have fallen^ who can doubt that the end is come of human things^ aycj of the earth itself. She^ she alone is the state by which all things are upheld even until now; where- fore let us make prayers and supplications to the God of heaven^ if indeed his statutes and his purposes can be delayed^ that that hateful tyrant come not sooner than we look for^ he for whom are reserved fearful deeds^ who shall pluck out that eye in whose ex* tinction the world itself shall perish".'^ With the
o Lact. Divin. IngtU. vii. ^5 : rebusque Bomanis, qnivimmaxi-
** Etiam res ipsa declarat lapsum mam universe orbi imminentem
roinamquererumbievifore : nisi ipsamque clansulam ssecuU acer-
quod incolumi urbe Boma nihil bitates horrendas comminantem
istinsmodi videtor esse metuen- Bomani imperii commeatu sci-
dum. At vero cum caput illud mus retardari." Also the same
orbis ocdderit, et p6firi esse cob- writer. Ad ScaptUam, cap. ii. :
perit quod Sibyllse fore aiunt, '* Christianus sciens imperatorem
quis dubitet venisse iam finem a Deo suo coustitui, necesse est
rebus humanis, orbique terra- . ut ipsum diligat et reyereatur et
rum I lUa, ilia est civitas quae honoret et salvum velit cum toto
adhuc sustentat omnia, precan- Bomano imperio quousque fte-
dusqne nobis et adorandus est oulum stabit : tamdiu enim sta-
Deus cceli si tamen statuta eius bit." So too the author — ^now
et placita differri possunt, ne usuallj supposed to be Hilary
citius quam putemus tyrannus the Deacon--of the Commentary
ille abominabilis veniat qui tan- on the Pauline Epistles ascrib^
tum f acinus moliatur, ac lumen to S. Ambrose : ' ** Non prius
illud effodiat cuius interitu mun- veniet Dominus quam regni Bo-
dus ipse lapsurus est." mani defectio fiat, et appareat
Cf.TeTtull.4po^. cap. zxzii.: antichristus qui interfioiet sane-
"Est et alia maior necessitas tos, reddita Bomanis libertate,
nobis orandi pro imperatoribus, sub suo tamen nomine.'* — ^Ad
etiam pro omni statu imperii II Theas. ii 4f 7.
24 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE:
Chap. III. triumph of Christianity this beKef had found a new basis. For as the Empire had decayed, the Church had grown stronger; and now while the one, trem- bling at the approach of the destroyer, saw province after province torn away, the other, rising in stately- youth, prepared to fill her place and govern in her name, and in doing so, to adopt and sanctify and propagate anew the notion of a universal and un* ending state. Sanctity of The second chief element in this conception was ^rLTname *^® association of ^ch a state with one irresponsible — * governor, the Emperor. The hatred to the name of kings, which their earliest political struggles had left in the Romans, by obliging him to take a new and strange title, marked him off from all the other sovereigns of the world. To the provin- cials especially he became an awAil impersonation of the great machine of government which moved above and around them. It was not merely that he was, like a modem king, the centre of power and the dispenser of honour : his pre-eminence, broken by no comparison with other princes, by the ascending ranks of no aristocracy, had in it something almost supernatural. The right of legislation had become vested in him alone : the decrees of the people, and resolutions of the senate, and edicts of the magistrates were, during the last three centuries, replaced by imperial constitutions ; his domestic council, the con- sistory, was the supreme court of appeal j his inter- position, like that of some terrestrial Providence, was invoked, and legally provided so to be, to reverse
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 25
or overleap the ordinary rules of law P. From the Chap. III. time of Julius and Augustus his person had been hallowed by the office of chief pontiffs and the tri- bunidan power ; to swear by his head was considered the most solemn of all oaths ' ; his effigy was sacred % even on a coin; to him or to his Genius temples were erected, and divine honours paid while he lived * ; and when, as it was expressed, he ceased to be among men, the title of Divus was accorded to him, afber a solemn consecration. In the confused multiplicity of mythologies, the worship of the Emperor was the only worship common to the whole Roman world, and was therefore that usually proposed as a test to the Christians on their trial. Under the new religion, the form of adoration vanished, the sentiment of reverence remained : the right to control Church as well as State, admitted at Nicsea, and habitually exercised by the sovereigns of Constantinople, made
p For example, \^ the " rest!- Cf. Zoa. v. 51 : cl tiJkv yhp fpbs
tutio nataliimi/' and the " adro- rhv $€hv T€rvxflicfi iMfievos dpkbs,
gatio per rescriptiim piincipis/' Ijv tw &s thchs irapiHuv MlHovras
or, aa it is expressed, ''per sa- rp rod 9cov i^i\my$pmrf^ r^wM.
cram oracnlnm.*' rp &<rc/3clf <nryyvifiriy. iirei Zh
t Even the Clmstian Emperors Kara tV ''vv 09ffi\4ws ifAwfuSK^^.
took the title of Pontifex Maxi- vav KopaXris, ovk thai Bffurhv
mus, till Gratian refdsed it : abrois ets rhy rotrovrov ZpKov ^(-
i$4fiurroif ttyai Xpi<rrtdy<^ rh ffx^' ofunprcty. fMiro^fo-as.— Zosimns, lib.iv.cap. ■ Tac. Ann. i. 73 > lii*38, etc. 56. * It is curious that this shoald
' " Maiore formidine et caUi- have begmi so early in the Em-
diore timiditate Gsesarem obser- pire. See, among other passages
vttfcis qnam ipsum ex Olympo that might be cited from the
lovem, et merito, si sdatis. . . . Augustan poets, Yirg. Oeorg.
Citius denique apud tos per i. 42 ; iy.*402 ; Hor. Od, iii. 3,
omnes Deos quam per unum 1 1 ; Ovid, I^. ex Ponto, iv. 9.
geniumCssarispeieratur." — ^Ter- J05. tull. Apolog, 0. zzviii. .
26 THE BOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. Ill, j^f^ Emperof hardly less essential to the new con- ception of a world-wide Christian monarchy than he had been to the military despotism of old. These considerations explain why the men of the fifth cen- tury, clinging to preconceived ideas, reftised to believe in that diasolution of the Empire which they saw wiHi their own eyes. Because it could not die, it lived. And there was in the slowness of the change and its external aspect, as well as in the fortunes of the capital, something to &vonr the illusion. The Roman name was shared by every subject; the Soman city was no longer the seat of government^ nor did her capture extinguish the imperial power, for the maxim was now accepted. Where the Emperor is, there is Rome". But her continued existence, not permanently occupied by any conqueror, striking the nations with an awe which the history or the external splendours of Constantinople, Milan, or Ravenna, could nowise inspire, was ah ever new assertion of the endurance of the Roman race and dominion. Dis- honoured and defenceless, the spell of her name was still strong enough to arrest the conqueror in the moment of triumph. The irresistible impulse that drew Alaric was one of glory or revenge, not of de- struction : the Hun turned back from Aquileia with a vague fear upon him : the Ostrogoth adorned and protected his splendid prize. lAut dayB In the history of the last days of the Western emEm^re. Empire, two poinds deserve special remark : its con- tinued union with the Eastern branch, and the way
THE HOLT EOMAN EMPIRE. 27
in whicli its ideal dignity Was respected wliile its Chap. III. representatives were despised. After Stilicho's deaths and Alaric^s invasion^ its fall was a question of tinie« While one by one the provinces were abandoned by the centcal. govemmant, Jefb»either to be occupied by invading tribes or to maintain a precarious in- dependence^ like Britain and Armorica^^ by means of municipal unions^ Italy lay at the mercy of the barbarian auxiliaries and was governed by their leaders. The degenerate line of Theodosius might have seemed to reign by hereditary rights but after their extiaction in Yalentinian III each phantom Emperor — Maximus^ Avitus, Majorian^ Anthemius^ Olybrius — ^received the purple firom the haughty Bicimer^ to be stripped of it when he presumed to forget his dependence. Though the division between Arcadius and Honorius had definitely severed the two realms for administrative purposes^ th^y still constituted a single Empire^ and the rulers of the East interfered more than once to raise to the Western throne princes they could not protect upon it. ' Ricimer's insolence quailed before the shadowy grandetu* of the imperial title: his ambition^ and Gundobald his successor's^ was bounded by the name of patrician. The bolder genius of Odoacer^ general of the barbarian auxiliaries^ resolved to abolish an empty pageant^ and extinguish the title and qffice of Emperor of the West. Yet even he dared no^ferther j and as the Gaulish warrior had
^ If the accounts we find of the Armorican republic can be trusted.
28 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. III. gazed on the silent majesty of the senate in a de- _ serted city, so the HeruUan revered the power before
which the world had bowed, and though there was no force to check or to affright him^ renounced the thought of investing the stalwait limbs of the North with the lu extino puTple of the Caesars. When, at pdoacer's bidding, ^Odi^m' ^^^^ Augustulus, the boy whom a whim of fate A.D.476. had chosen to be the last native Caesar of Rome, had formally announced his resignation to the senate, a deputation from that body proceeded to the Eastern court to lay the insignia of royalty at the feet of Zeno. The West, they declared, no longer required an Emperor of its own ; one monarch sufficed for the world; Odoacer was qualified by his wisdom and courage to be the protector of their state, and upon him Zeno was entreated to confer the title of pa- trician and the administration of the Italian pro- vinces*. The Emperor granted what he could not refuse, and Odoacer, taking the title of Kingy, con- tinued the consular office, respected the civil and ecclesiastical institutions of his subjects, and ruled for fourteen years as the nominal vicar of the Eastern
* PJHyoviTTOS 6 *Op4(rrov vlhs fidxtfMV. Koi ZetirBcu rov Z^vwos
iuco{Kras Ziivwifct ird\iy r^i^ fiatri' irarpaciov re airr^ &TO(rrc<Aat
Ac^ai' &vaK€KTTia'$ai rrjs ta. . . . iL^lav koX t^p rStv ^Vrd\wv rovr^
ilvdyKourf r^v fiovK^v ktrotrtuKai i^Tvai ^iclmiariy, — ^Malchus ap.
vptfffitTay Z'fivuyi anifAaiyovffay &s Photmin in Corp, Hist. Byzant. iZias fx^v ahrdis fiaaiXfias ob S4oi, 3r Kot king of Italy, as is often
Kotvhs 86 diroxp^trci fx6yos &v alro' said. The barbarian kings did
Kpdrap iir* d.fx^<yrtpois roTs iripatri, not for several centuries employ
rhv ft.4vToi*Od6axoy ^ ainQv trpo- territonal titles. Jomandes telLs
j8c)3A.^<rdai iKotvhv 6vra a<&(€iv t& us that Odoacer never so much as
tap* tdnois vpdyfMTa iroXtriK^y assumed the insignia of royalty. ^X^^ *'ovy Koi ffivtciy SfAov Kot
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 29
Emperor. There was thus legally no extinction of Chap. hi. the Western Empire at all, but only a reunion of East and West. In form, and to some extent also in the belief of men, things now reverted to their state during the first two centuries of the Empire, save that Syzantium instead of Rome was the centre of the civil government. The joint tenancy which had been conceived by Diocletian, carried further by Constantine, renewed under Valentinian I, and again at the death of Theodosius, had come to an end; once more did a single Emperor sway the sceptre of the world, and head an undivided Catholic Church^. To those who lived at the time, this year (476 a,d.) was no such epoch as it has since become, nor was any impression made on men's minds commensurate with the real significance of the event. For though it did not destroy the Empire in idea, nor wholly even in fact, its consequences were from the first great. It developed Latinism: it emancipated the Popes: it gave a new character to the projects and govern- ment of the Teutonic ruleirs of the West. But the importance of remembering its formal aspect to those who witnessed it will be felt as we approach the era when the Empire was revived by Charles the Frank.
Odoacer's monarchy was not more oppressive than Odoacer, those of his neighbours in Gaul, Spain, and Africa. But the mercenary fcederati who supported it were a loose swarm of predatory tribes : themselves without
* Sismondi; Histoire de la CKuU de V Empire OcciderUale,
30 THE HOLY ROMAN MMPISE.
Chap. III. cohesion, they could take no firm root in Italy. The Herulian* had conquered; he failed to organize: and the first real attempt to blend the peoples and maintain the traditions of Boman wisdom in the hands of a new and vigorous race was reserved for the greatest of all the barbarian conquerors, the fore-
Theodorie. runner of the first barbarian Emperor, Theodoric the Ostrogoth. The aim of his reign, though he pro- fessed allegiance to the Eastern court which had favoured his invasion^, was the establishment of a national monarchy in Italy. Brought up as a hostage in the court of Byzantium, he learnt to know the advantages of an orderly and cultivated society and the principles by which it must be maintained; called in early manhood to roam as a warrior-chief over the plains of the Danube, he acquired along with the arts of command a seAse of the superiority of his own people in valour and energy and truth. When the defeat and death of Odoacer had left the peninsula at his mercy he sought no further con- quest, easy as it would have been to tear away new provinces from the Eastern realm, but strove only to preserve and strengthen the ancient polity of Rome, to breathe into her decaying institutions the spirit of a fresh life, and without endangering the military supremacy of his own Goths, to conciliate by in-
* Odoacer, or Odovakar, as it cognate tribes,
seems he ought to be called, is ^ " Nil deest nobis imperio
variously described as king of vestrofamfUantibus."— Theodoric
the Heruli, Rugii, Skyrri, or to Zeno : Jomandes, De JRebus
Turcilingi. Probably the Heruli Getich, cap. S'j, were the chief among several
J'HE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 31
dulgence and gradually raise to the level of their Chap. III. masters the degenerate population of Italy. The Gothic nation appears from the first less cruel in war and more prudent in council than any of their Germanic brethren ^ : all that was most noble among them shone forth now in the rule of the greatest of the Amali. Prom his palace at Verona, ennobled by the legends of the Nibelungs, he issued equal laws for Roman and Goth, and bade the intruder, if he must occupy part of the lan4^, at least respect the goods and the- person of his fellow-subject. Juris- prudence and administration remained in native hands : two annual consuls, one named by Theodoric, the other by the Eastern monarch, presented an image of the ancient state ; and while agriculture and the arts revived in the provinces, Rome herself celebrated the visits of a master who provided for the wants of her people and preserved with care the monuments of her former splendour. With peace and plenty men^s minds took hope, and the study of letters revived. The last gleam of classical lite- rature gilds the reign of the barbarian. By the consolidation of the two races under one wise govern- ment, Italy might have been spared six hundred years of gloom and degradation. It was not so to be. Theodoric was tolerant, but toleration was itself a crime in the eyes of his orthodox subjects : the Arian Goths were and remained strangers and ene- mies among the Catholic Italians. Scarcely had the
^ *' Unde et poene omnibus barbaris Gothi Bapientiores ezstiterunt Gnecisqne poene confiixniles." — Jorn. cap. 5.
32 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. III. sceptre passed from the hands of Theodoric to his unworthy descendants, when Justinian, who had viewed with jealousy the greatness of his nominal lieutenant, determined to assert his dormant rights Italy re- over Italy; its people welcomed Belisarius as a de- ^jZt liverer^ and the race and name of the Ostrogoths nian, perished in the struggle. Thus again reunited in fact to the Roman Empire, the peninsula was divided into counties and dukedoms, and obeyed the exarch of Ravenna, viceroy of the Byzantine court, till the arrival of the Lombards in a.d. 568 drove him from some districts, and left him only a feeble authority in the rest. The Tram- Beyond the Alps, though the Roman population vSim^^^^ had now ceased to seek help from the Eastern court, the Empire^s rights stiU subsisted in theory, and were never legally extinguished. As has been said, they were admitted by the conquerors themselves : by Athaulf, when he reigned in Aquitaine as the vicar of Honorius, and recovered Spain from the Suevi to restore it to its ancient masters; by the Visigothic kings of Spain, when they permitted the Mediterranean cities to send tribute to Byzantium; by Clovis, when, after the representatives of the old government, Syagrius and the Armorican cities, had been overpowered or absorbed, he received with de- light from Anastasius the grant of a Roman dignity to confirm his possession. Arrayed like a Fabius or a Valerius in the consults embroidered robe, the Sicambrian chieftain rode through the streets of Tours, while the shout of the. provincials hailed him
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 33
Augustus d. They already obeyed him, but his Chap. III. power was now legalised in their eyes, and it was not without a melancholy pride that they saw the terrible conqueror himself yield to the spell of the Roman name, and do homage to the enduring majesty of their legitimate sovereign®.
Yet the severed limbs of the Empire forgot hy Lingering
degrees their original unity. As in the breaking up J^^T of the old society which we trace from the sixth to the eighth century rudeness and ignorance grew apace, as language and manners were changed by the infiltration of Teutonic settlers, as men^s thoughts and hopes and interests were narrowed by isolation from their fellows, as the organization of the Roman province and the Germanic tribe alike dissolved into a chaos whence the new order began to shape itself, dimly and doubtftdly as yet, the memory of the old Empire, its symmetiy^ its sway, its civilization, must needs wane and fade. It mi^t h^ve periahed alto- gether but for the ^-^n ^^^nwng unf^nAjagtfjfi ^.nTnp had left — ^her Church and her Law. The barbarians had lUligim.
atlrst associated Christianily with the Romans from whom they learned it : the latter had used it as their only bulwark against oppression. The hierarchy were the natural leaders of the people, and the necessary
^ " Et ab ea die tanquam con- portance lower (Middle Ages,
8ul aut (»et) Augustus est voci- note iii. to chap. i.). But taken
tatus." — Gregory ofTour8,ii. 58. in connexion with the grant of
« Sir F. Palgrave {English south-eastern Gaul to Theodebert
Commonwealth) considers this by Justinian, it shews that the
grant as equivalent to a for- influence of the Empire was still
mal ratification of Clovis* rule felt in these distant provinces, in GauL Hallam rates its im-
34 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. III. councillors of the king. Their power grew with the extinction of civif government and the spread of superstition ; and when the Frank found it too valu- able to be abandoned to the vanquished people^ he insensibly acquired the feelings and policy of the order he entered. As the Empire fell to pieces, and the new kingdoms themselves began to dissolve, the Church clung more closely to her unity of faith and disciplines the common bond of all Christian men. That unity must have a centre, that centre was Rome. A succession of able and zealous pontiffs extended her influence (the sanctity and the writings of Gre- Jurupru- gory the Great were famous through all the West) : dmce. never occupied by barbarians, she retained her peculiar character and customs, and laid the foundations of a power over men^s souls more durable than that which she had lost over their bodies ^. Only second in importance to this influence was that which was exercised by the permanence of the old law, and of its creature the municipality. The barbarian invaders retained the customs of their ancestors, characteristic memorials of a rude people, as we see them in the Salic law or in the ordinances of Ina and Alfred. But the subject population and the clergy continued to be governed by that elaborate system which the genius and labour of many generations had raised to
' Even 80 early as the middle sacerdotalis et regia, per sacram
of the fifth century, S. Leo the B. Petri sedem caput orhis ef-
Great could say to the Boman fecta latius pnesideres religione
people, "Isti (sc. Petrus et divina quam dominatione ter-
Paulus) sunt qui te ad hanc rena." — Sermon on the feast of
gloriam, provexerunt ut gens SS, Peter and PavH, (0pp. torn,
sancta, populus electus, civitas i. p. 336.)
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 35
be the most lasting monument of Roman greatness. Chap. III. The civil law had maintained itself in Spain and Southern Gaul^ nor was it quite forgotten even in the North, in Britain, on the borders of Germany. Revised editions of the Theodosian code were issued by the Visigothie and Surgundian princes. For some centuries it was the patrimony of the subject population everywhere, and in Aquitaine and Italy has outlived feudalism. The presumption in later times was that all men were to be judged by it who could not be proved to be subject to some other &. Its phrases, its forms, its courts, its subtlety and precision, all recalled the strong and refined society which bad produced it. Other motives, as well as those of kindness to their subjects, made the new kings favour it ; for it exalted their prerogative, and the submission enjoined on one class of their subjects soon came to be demanded jfrom the other, by their own laws the equals of the prince. Consider- ing attentively how many of the old institutions continued to subsist, and studying the feelings of that time, as they are faintly preserved in its scanty records, it seems hardly too much to say that in the eighth century the Roman Empire still existed : existed in men's minds as a power weakened, dele- gated, suspended, but not destroyed.
It is easy for those who read the history of an age in the light of those that followed it, to perceive
K "lus Bomanum est adhuc adversum probetur." — Maranta, in viridi observantia et eo iure quoted by Marquard Freher. prsesumittiT quilibet vivere nisi
36 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. III. that in this men erred; that the tendency of events was wholly different; that society had entered on a new phase, wherein every change did more to localize authority and strengthen the aristocratic principle at the expense of the despotic. We can see that other forms of life, more full of promise for the distant future, had already hegun to shew them- selves : they — with no type of power or heauty, but that which had filled the imagination of their fore- fathers, and now loomed on them grander than ever through the mist of centuries — mistook, as it was said of Bienzi, memories for hopes, and sighed only for the renewal of its strengfth. Events were at hand by which these hopes seemed destined to be gratified.
CHAPTER IV.
EESTOBATION OF THE WBSTESN BICPIBS.
It was towards Borne as their ecclesiastical capital Ghap. IY. . that the thoughts and hopes of the men of the sixth and seventh centuries were constantly directed* Yet not from Bome^ feeble and comipt^ nor on the ex* hausted soil of Italy, was the deliverer to arise. Just when, as we may suppose, the vision of a renewal of imperial authority in the Western provinces was beginning to vanish away, there appeared in the furthest comer of Europe, sprung of a race but lately brought within the pale of civilization, a line of chieftains devoted to the service of the Holy See, and among them one whose power, good fortune, and heroic character pointed him out as worthy of a dignity to which doctrine and tradition had at- tached a sanctity almost divine.
Of the new monarchies that ha'd risen on the ruins The of Rome, that of the Franks was by far the greatest. ^''«'^- In the third century they appear, with Saxons, Alemanni, and Thuringians, as one of the greatest Grerman tribe leagues. The Sicambri (for it seems probable that this famous race was a chief source of the Frankish nation) had now laid aside their former hostility to Home, and her future represen-
38 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
•
Chap. IV. tatives were thenceforth, with few intervals, her faithful allies. Many of their chiefs rose to high place : Malarich receives from Jovian the charge of the Western provinces ; Sauto and Mellobaudes figure in the days of Theodosius and his sons : Meroveus (if Meroveus be a real name) fights under Aetius against Attila : his countrymen endeavour in vain to save. Graul from the Suevi and Surgundians. Not till the Empire was evidently helpless did they claim a share of the booty ; then Clovis, or Chlodovech, chief of the Salian tribe, leaving his kindred the Ripuarians in their seats on the lower Rhine, advances from Flanders to wrest Gaul from the barbarian nations which had entered it some sixty years before. Few
A.D. 486. conquerors have had a career of more imbroken success. By the defeat of the Roman governor Syagrius he was left master of the northern pro- vinces: the Burgundian kingdom in the valley of the Rhone was in no long time reduced to depen- dence : last of all, the Visigothic power was over- thrown in one great battle, and Aquitaine ad^ed to the dominions of Clovis. Nor were the Frank- ish arms less prosperous on the other side of the Rhine. The victory of Tolbiac led to the submis- sion of the Alemanni; their allies the Bavarians followed, and when the Thuringian power had been broken by Theodorich I (son of Clovis), the Frankish league embraced all the tribes of western and southern Germany. The state thus formed, stretching from the Bay of Biscay to the Inn and the Ems, was of course in no sense a French, that is to say, a Gallic monarchy.
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPISS. 3^
Nor, although the widest and strongest empire that Chap. iv. had yet been founded by a Teutonic race, was it, under the Merovingian kings, a united kingdom at all, but rather a congeries of principalities, held together by the predominance of a single nation and a single femily, who ruled in Gaul as masters over a subject race, and in Germany exercised a sort of hegemony among kindred and scarcely inferior tribes. But towards the middle of the eighth century a change % began. Under the rule of Kpin of Herstal and his son Charles Martel, mayors of the palace to the last feeble Merovingians> the Austrasian Franks in the lower Bhineland became acknowledged heads of the nation, and were able, while establishing a firmer government at home, to direct its whole strength in projects of foreign ambition/ The form those projects took arose from a circumstance which has not yet been mentioned. It was not solely or even chiefly to their own valour that the Franks owed their past greatness and the yet loftier fiiture which awaited them, it was to the friendship of the clergy and the favour of the Apostolic See. The other Teutonic nations, Goths, Vandals, Burgundians, Sue- vians, Lombards, had been most of them concerted by Arian missionaries who proceeded from the Roman Empire during the short period when Arian doctrines were in the ascendant. The Franks, who were among the latest converts, were Catholics from the first, and gladly accepted the clergy as their teachers and allies. Thus it was that while the hostility of their orthodox subjects destroyed the Vandal kingdom in
V
40 THE BOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. IV. Africa and the Ostrogotliic kingdom in Italy^ the eager sympathy of the priesthood enahled the Franks to yanquish their Burgundian and Yisigothic enemies^ and made it easy for them to blend with the Boman population in the provinces. They had done good service against the Saracens of Spain ; they had aided the English Boniface in his mission to the heathen of Germany^ ; and at lengthy bb the most powerful among Catholic nations^ they attracted the eyes of the ecclesiastical head of the West^ now sorely bested by domestic foes. Italy: the Since the invasion of Alboin^ Italy had groaned Lombards, i^der a complication of evils. The Lombards who had entered along with that chief in a.I). 568 had settled in considerable numbers in the valley of the Po^ and founded the duchies of Spoleto and Bene- vento, leaving the rest of the country to be governed by the exarch of Bavenna as viceroy of the Eastern crown. This subjection was, however, little better than nominal. Although too few to occupy the whole peninsula, the invaders were yet strong enough to harass every part of it by inroads which met with no resistance from a population unused to arms, and without the spirit to use them in self- defence. More cruel and repulsive, if we may be- lieve the evidence of their enenlies, than any other of the Northern tribes, the Lombards were certainly singular in their aversion to the clergy, never ad-
^ "Denique gens Francomm dendo, sed et .alios salutifere multos et foecandissimos fructus convertendo," says the emperor JPomino attulit^. non solum ere- Lewis II in A.Jf. 871.
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 41
mitting them to the national eo^QciI8. Tonnented Ghaf. it. by their repeated attacks^ Borne sought help in vain from Byzantium^ whose forces^ scarce able to repel from their walls the Bulgarians^ Avars^ and Saracens^ could give no support to the distant exarch of Ra- venna. The Popes were the Emperor's subjects; they Tht Popes. awaited his confirmation^ like other bishops; they had more than once been the victims of his anger K But as the city became more accustomed in inde- pendence^ and the Pope rose to a predominance^ real if not yet legale his tone grew bolder than that of the Eastern patriarchs. In the controversies that had raged in the Churchy he had had the wisdom or good fortune to espouse the orthodox side: it was now by another quarrel of religion that his deliverance from an unwelcome yoke was accom- plished^. The Emperor Leo^ bom among the Isaurian moun-
* Martm, as in earlier times of strengthening their political
Sylverins. * revolt) carried their heresy fur-
^ A singular account of the ther and founded Mohammedan- origin of the separation of the iBm.** Similarly, the Franciscan Greeks and Latins occurs in the Marsilius of Padua (circa 1314) treatise of Badulfus de Columna says that Mohammed, '' a rich (Ralph Co]onna,or,as8omethink, Persian,'' invented his religion de Goloumelle), De translatione to keep the East from return- Ifypherii Romani (care. 1500). ing to allegiance to Home. It " The tyranny of Heraclius," is worth remarking that few, if says he, " provoked a revolt any, of the earlier historians of the Eastern nations. They (from the tenth to the fifteenth could not be reduced, because century) refer to the Emperors the Greeks at the aaniie time of the West from Constantine began to disobey the Roman to Augustulus : the very ezist- Ponti£^ receding, like Jero- ence of this Western line seems boam, from the true fitith. to have been even in the eight Others among these sohisma- or ninth century altogether for- ties (apparenuy with the view gotten.
42 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. 'iv. tains^ where a purer faith yet lingered, and stung Iconoclas- ^7 ^^^ Mohammedan taUnt of idolatry, determined ticcoruro- to abolish the worship of images, which seemed fast obscuring the more spiritual part of Christianity, An attempt sufficient to cause tumults among the submissive Greeks, excited in Italy a fiercer com- motion. The popidace rose with one heart in de-^ fence of what had become to them more than a symbol: the exarch was slain: the Pope, though unwilling to sever himself from the lawful head and protector of the Church, must yet excommunicate the prince whom he could not reclaim &om so hateful a heresy. Liudprand, king of the Lom- bards^ improved his opportunity: falling on the exarchate as the champion of images, on Rome as the minister of the Greek Emperor, he overran the one, and all but succeeded in capturing the other, The Pope escaped for the moment, but saw his peril; placed between a heretic and a robber, he turned his gaze beyond the Alps, to a Catholic chief who had just achieved a signal deliverance for Christendom on the field of Poitiers, Gregory II had already opened communications with Charles Martel, mayor of the palace, and virtual ruler of the Prankish realm K As the crisis becomes more press- ing, Gregory III finds in the same quarter his only hope, and appeals to him, in urgent letters, to haste to the succour of Holy Church"^, Some accounts
I Anastasius, Vitce Pontifimm in Muratori's Scriptof^ Jterum Romanorum. Italicarwn, vol. iii. ^art 2nd),
m Letter in Codex CaroUnue, addressed ** Subregulo Carolo,"
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 43
add that Charles was offered, in the name of the Chap. iv. Eoman people, the office of consul and patrician. The Popes It is at least certain that here begins the connexion ??P^i^ ^%
° . . the Franks,
of the old imperial seat with the rising German power : here first the pontiff leads a political move- ment, and shakes off the ties that bound him to his legitimate sovereign. Charles died before he could obey the call; but his son Pipin (sumamed the Short) made good use of the new friendship with Rome. He was the third of his family who had ruled the Franks with a monarches full power ; it seemed time to abolish the pageant of Merovin- gian royalty ; yet a departure from the ancient line might shock the feelings of the people. A course was taken whose dangers no one then foresaw : the Holy See, now for the first time invoked as an in^ ternational power, pronounced the deposition of Chil- deric, and gave to the royal office of his successor Pipin a sanctity hitherto unknown ; adding to the old Frankish election, which consisted in raising the chief on a shield amid the clash of arms, the Eoman diadem and the Hebrew right of anointing. The compact between the chair of Peter and the Teutonic throne was hardly sealed, when the latter was summoned to discharge its share of. the duties. Twice did Aistulf the Lombard assail Rome, twice did Pipin descend to the rescue: the second time at the bidding of a letter written in the name of St. Peter himself", Aistulf could make no resist^
^ Letter in Cod, Carol, (Mur. mixture of earnest adjurations^ Jt.S,I, iii. [2^] p« 96), a strange dexterous appeals to Frankish
44
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE:
this title.
Chap. IV. ance ; and the Prank bestowed on the Papal chair p. .^ ^ all that belonged to the exarchate in North Italy, tridanof receiving as the meed of his services the title of
th^Bomaru, patrician^ A.D. 754. -taxncian .
As a foreshadowing of the higher dignity that was to follow^ this title requires a passing notice. In- troduced by Constantine at a time when its original Import^ of meaning had been long forgotten, it was designed to be, and for awhile remained, the name not of an office but of a rank, the highest after those of emperor and consul. As such, it was usually conferred upon pro- vincial governors of the first class, and in time also upon barbarian potentates whose vanity the Roman court might wish to flatter. Thus Odoacer, Theo- doric, the Burgundian king Sigismund, Clovis him- self, had all received it from the Eastern emperor; so too in still later times it was given to Saracenic and Bulgarian princes P. In the sixth and seventh centuries an invariable practice seems to hav^e at- tached it to the Byzantine viceroys of Italy, and
pride, and long scriptural quo- tations : " Declaratum quippe est quod super omnes gentes yestra Francorum gens prona mihi Apostolo Dei Petro ex- stitit, et ideo ecclesiam quam mihi Dominus' tradidit vobis per manusVicarii mei commendavi." o The exact date when Pipin re- ceived the title cannot be made out. Pope Stephen's next letter (p. 96 of Mur. iii.) is addressed ** Pipino, Carolo et Carolomanno patriciis.'* And so the Chroni- con Casinense (Mur. iv. 273) pays it was first given to Pipin.
Gibbon can hardly be right in attributing it to Charles Martel, although one or two documents ma^y be quoted in which it is used of him. As one of these is a letter of Pope Gregory ll's, the explanation may be that the title was offered or intended to be offered to him, although never accepted by him.
P The title of Patrician ap- pears even in the remote West : it stands in a charter of Ina the West Saxon king, and in one given by Richard of Normandy in A. D. 1015. Ducange, 9. v.
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 45
thus^ as we may conjecture, a natural confusion of Chap. iv. ideas had made men take it to be, in some sense, an official title, conveying an extensive though unde- fined authority, and implying in particular the duty of overseeing the Church and promoting her temporal interests. It was doubtless with such a meaning that the Romans and their bishop bestowed it upon the Frankish kings, acting quite without legal right, for it could emanate from the emperor alone, but choosing it as the title which bound its possessor to render to the Church support and defence against her Lombard foes. Hence the phrase is always ^ Patricins Romanorum;' not, as in former times, 'Patricms' alone : hence it is usually associated with the terms ^defensor' and ^protector.' And since ^ defence^ implies a corresponding measure of obedi- ence on the part of those who profit by it, there must have been conceded to the new patrician more or less of positive authority in B;ome, although not such as to extinguish the supremacy of the Emperor.
So long indeed as the Franks were separated by Extinditm a hostile kingdom from their new allies, this control laldhina- remained little better than nominal. But when on dom by Pipings death the restless Lombards again took '^J? king of the arms and menaced the possessions of the Church, -f»"«wA«. Kpin's son Charles swept down like a whirlwind from the Alps at the call of Pope Hadrian, seized king Desiderius in his capital, assumed himself the Lombard crown, and made northern Italy thence- forward an integral part of the Frankish empire. Proceeding to Rome at the head of his victorious
I
i
46 IrSJE HOLT MOM AN EMPIRE.
Chap. IV. army, the first of a long line of Teutonic kings who were to find her love more deadly than her hate, he was received by Hadrian with distinguished honours, and welcomed by the people as their leader and deliverer. Yet even then, whether out of policy or from that sentiment of reverence to which his ambitious mind did not refuse to bow, he was mode- rate in claims of jurisdiction, he yielded to the pontiff the place of honour in processions, and renewed, A.D. 774. although in the guise of a lord and conqueror, the gift of the Exarchate and Pentapolis, which Pipin had made to the Roman Church twenty years before. Charles It is with a strange sense, half of sadness, half
Hadrian. ^^ amusement, that in watching the progress of this grand historical drama, we recognise the meaner motives by which its chief actors were influenced. The Frankish king and the Boman pontiff were for the time the two most powerful forces that urged the movement of the world, leading it on by swift steps to a mighty crisis of its fate, themselves guided, as it might well seem, by the purest zeal for its spiritual welfare. Their words and acts, their whole character and bearing in the sight of expectant Christendom, were worthy of men destined to leave an indelible impress on their own and many suc- ceeding ages. Nevertheless in them too appears the undercurrent of vulgar human desires and passions. The lofty and fervent mind of Charles was not free from the stirrings of personal ambition: yet these may be excused, if not defended, as almost insepar- able from an intense and restless genius, which, be
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE, 47
it never so unselfish in its ends, must in pursuing Chap. IV. them fix upon everything its grasp and raise out of ~~~ everything its monument. The policy of the Popes was prompted by motives less noble. Ever since the extinction of the Western Empire had emancipated the ecclesiastical potentate from secular control, the first and most abiding object of his schemes and prayers had been the acquisition of territorial wealth in the neighbourhood of his capital. He had in- deed a sort of justification — ^for Rome, a city with neither trade nor industry, was crowded with poor, for whom it devolved on the bishop to provide. Yet the pursuit was one which could not fail to pervert the purposes of the Popes and give a sinister character to all they did. It was thii fear for the lands of the Church far more than^ibr religion or the safety^^^
UTi^ro toqTTj nTiHQT^n^ni»oH ]jjr j^j^p J,Qfr^KQ|.rl afttackS
that had prompted their passionate appeals yio Charles Martel ana i^pm; it was now the well-grounded hope of having these possessions confirmed and ex- tended by Pipings greater son that made the Roman ecclesiastics so forward in his cause. And it was the same lust after worldly wealth and pomp, mingled with the dawning prospect of an independent prin- cipaUty, that now began to seduce them into a long course of guile and intrigue. For this is probably the very time, although the exact date cannot be established, to which must be assigned the ex- traordinary forgery of the Donation of Constantino, whereby, it was pretended that power over Italy
J
48 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. IV. and the whole West had been granted by the first Christian Emperor to Pope Sylvester and his suc- cessors in the Chair of the Apostle.
For the next twenty-four years Italy remained quiet. B/ome^s government was carried on in the name of the Patrician^ although it does not appear that he sent thither any official representative; while at the same time both the city and the exarchate continued to admit the supremacy of the Eastern Emperor, employing the years of his reign to date Accmwn. documents. In a.d. 796 Leo III succeeded Pope Leo Tn Hadi;ian, and signalized his devotion to the Prankish A.D. 796. throne by sending to Charles the banner of the city and the keys of the holiest of all Rome^s shrines^ the confession of St. Peter, asking that some officer should be deputed to the city to receive from the people their oath of allegiance to the Patrician. He had soon need to seek the Patrician^s help for himseK. In 798 a sedition broke out : the Pope, going in solenm procession from the Lateran to the church of S. Lorenzo in Lucina, was attacked by a band of armed men, headed by two officials of his court, nephews of his predecessor; was wounded and left for dead, and with difficulty succeeded in escaping to Spoleto, whence he fled northward into the Prankish lands. Charles had led his army against the revolted Saxons : thither Leo following overtook him at Paderborn. The king received with respect his spiritual father, entertained and conferred with him for some time, and at length sent him back to Borne under the escort of Angilbert, one of his
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 49
trustiest ministers ; promising to follow ere long in Chap. IV. person. After some months peace was restored in Saxony^ and in the autunm of 799 Charles descended &om the Alps once more, while Leo revolved deeply the great scheme for whose accomplishment the time was now ripe.
Three hundred and twenty-four years had passed BdUf in since the last Cassar of the West resigned his Empire not power into the hands of the senate, and left to his «a^tw«. Eastern brother the sole headship of the Roman world. To the latter Italy had from that time been nominally subject ; but only in one brief interval, between the death of Totila the last Ostrogothic king and the descent of Alboin the first Lombard, had that power been really effective. In the further provinces, Gaul, Spain, Britain, it was only a memory. But the idea of a Soman Empire as a necessary part of the world^s order had not vanished: it had been admitted by those who seemed to be destroying it ; it had been cherished by the Church; was still re- called by laws and customs.; was dear to the subject populations, who fondly looked back to the days when slavery was at least mitigated by order. We have seen the Teuton endeavouring everywhere to identify himself with the system he overthrew. As Goths, Burgundians, and Franks sought the title of consul or patrician, as the Lombard kings when they renounced their Arianism styled themselves Mavii, so even in distant England Ethelbert the Bretwalda^ adopted in his arms the device of the wolf and twins ;
4 Palgrave, English Commonwealth.
E
50 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. IV. Aella and Edwin deduced from Carausius their title
of Imperator Britannia. Witjiin the last century and a half the rise of Mohammedanism' had brought out the common Christianity of Europe into a fuller relief. The false prophet had left one religion, one Empire, one Commander of the faithfol : the Chris- tian commonwealth needed more than ever an ef- ficient head and centre. Such leadership it 'could nowise find in the Court of the Bosphorous, growing ever feebler and more alien to the West. The name of '^ respublica/' permanent at the elder Rome, had never been applied to the Eastern Empire. Its go- vernment was from the first half Greek, half Asiatic; and had now drifted away Irom its ancient traditions into the forms of an Orient^ despotism. Claudian had already sneered at ^^ Greek Qiiirites^:^' the general use, since Heraclius's reign, of the Greek tongue, and the difference of manners and usages. Motives of made the taunt now more deserved. The Pope had ^^^' no reason to wish well to* the Byzantine princes, who while insulting his weakness had given him no help against the savage Lombards, and who for nearly seventy years*- had been contaminated by a heresy the more odious that it was on points not speculative.
' After the translatio ad Fran' Khalifates of Bagdad and Cor- C08 of A.D. 800, the two Empires dova. — See on this subject Free- corresponded e3cactly to the two man's Lectures on the Saracens.
* ** Plaudentem ceme senatum
Et Byzantines proceres, Graiosque Quirites.*'
In Eutrop, ii. 135.
^ Several Emperors during this which I write : the stain never- period had been patronsof images, theless adhered to their govern- as was Irene at the moment of ment as a whole.
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 51
In North Italy their power was extinct : no pontiff Chap. IV. since Zaeharias had asked their confirmation of his election : nay, the appointment of the intruding Frank to the patriciate, an office which it belonged to the Emperor to confer, was of itself an act of rebellion. Nevertheless their rights subsisted : they were still, and while they retained the imperial name, must so long continue, titular sovereigns of the Boman city. Nor could the spiritual head of Christendom dispense with the temporal ; without the Roman Empire there could not be a Roman, nor by neces^ sary consequence a Catholic and Apostolic Church. For, as will be shewn more ftdly hereafter, Baen could not separate in fact what was indissoluble in thought ; nhri«j^Tiity ^]]pt stand or fall alony with the ^eat Christian state. Thus urged, the Pope took a step which some among his predecessors are said to have abeady contemplated ", and towards which the events of the la^t fifty years had pointed. The moment was opportune. The widowed empress Irene, equally &mous for her beauty, her talents, and her crimes, had deposed and blinded her son Con- stantino VI : a woman, an usurper, abnost a par- ricide, sullied the throne of the world. By what right, it might well be asked, ^d the mob of By- zantium impose a« master on the original seat of Empire ? It was time to jprovide better for the most august of human offices : an election at Rome was as valid as at Constantinople — ^the possessor of the
» Monachus Sangallensis* De Gestis Earoli ; in Fertz, ilfonti- tMfnXa OermanicB Historica.
E 2,
52 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. IV. real power should also be clothed with the outward dignity. Nor could it be doubted where that pos- sessor was to be found. The Frank had been always faithM to Borne : his baptism was the enlistment of a new barbarian auxiliary. His services against the Arian and the Lombard^ the Saracen and the Avar, had earned him the title of Champion of the Faith and Defender of the Holy See. He was now unquestioned lord of Western Europe, whose subject nations, Keltic and Teutonic, were eager to be called by his name and to imitate his customs^. In Charles, the hero who united under one sceptre so many races, who ruled all as the vicegerent of God, the pontiff might well see — as later ages saw — the new golden head of a second imagex, erected on the ruins of that whose mingled iron and clay were crumbling to nothingness behind the impr^nable bulwarks of Constantinople. Carmation At length the Frankish host entered Rome. The %Zie^ Pope^s cause was heard; his innocence, already vin- A.D. 800. dicated by a miracle, was pronounced by ihe Pa- trician in full synod; his accusers condemned in his stead. Charles remained in the city for some weeks; and on Christmas-day, a*d. 800 z, he heard mass in the basilica of St. Peter. On the spot where now the gigantic dome of Bramante and Michael Angelo towers over the buildings of the modem city, the spot which tradition had hallowed as that of the
* Monachus Sangallensis ; tU * Or rather, according to the
supra. then prevailing practice of be-
y Alciatii8> De Formvla im- ginning the year from Christmas-
peril Eomani. day, a.d. 801.
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 53
Apostle^s martyrdom^ Constantine the Great liad Chap. iv. erected the oldest and stateliest temple of Christian Borne. Nothing could be less like than was this basilica to those Northern cathedrals^ shadowy, fan- tastic, irregular, crowded with pillars, fringed all round by clustering shrines and chapels, which are to most of us the types of mediaBval architecture. In its plan and decorations, in the spacious sunny hall, the roof plain as that of a Greek temple, the long rows of Corinthian columns, the vivid mosaics on its walls, in its brightness, its sternness, its sim- plicity, it had preserved every feature of Roman art, and had remained a perfect expression of the Soman character®. Out of the transept, a flight of steps led up to the high altar underneath and just beyond the great arch, the arch of triumph as it was called: behind in the semicircular apse sat the clergy, rising tier above tier around its walls; in the midst, high above the rest, and looking down past the altar over the multitude, was placed the bishop^s throne^, itself the curule chair of some for- gotten magistrate^'. From that chair the Pope now
• An elaborate deeoription of in those law courts on the model
old St. Feter*6 may be fonnd in of which the first basilicas were
BuQsen's and Platner^s Besckreir constructed^ This arrangement
htmg der Stadt Bom ; with which may kHU. be seen in some of
compare Bunsen's work on the the churches of Borne, as well
Baeilicafi of Bome. as elsewhere in Italy ; nowhere
b The primitive custom was for better than in the cathedral of the bishop to sit in the centre Torcello, near Venice, of the apse, at the central point ^ On this chair were repro- of the east end of the church sented the labours of Hercules (or, as it would be more correct to and the signs of the zodiac. It say, the end furthest from the is believed at Bome to be the door) just afi the judge had done veritable chair of the Apostle
54 . THE HOLY •ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. FV. rose, as the reading of the Gospel ended, advanced " to where Charles — ^who had exchanged his simple
Frankish dress for the sandals and the chlamys of a Boman patrician^ — ^knelt in prayer by the high altar, and as in the sight of all he placed upon the brow of the barbarian chieftain the diadem of the Caesars, then bent in obeisance before him, the church rang to the shout of the multitude, again £ree, again the lords and centre of the world, " Karolo Augusto a Deo coronato magno et pacifico imperatori vita et victoria e/' In that shout, echoed by the Pranks without, was pronounced the union, so long in pre- paration, so mighty in its consequences, of the Boman and the Teuton, of the memories and the civilization of the South with the fresh energy of the North, and from that moment modem history begins.
himself, and whatever may be phagus in which Charles himself
thought of such an antiquity lay, till the French scattered his
as tMs, it can be satisfactorily bones abroad, had carved on it
traced back to the third or the rape of Proserpine. It may
fourth century of Christianity, still be seen in the galleiy of the
It is now enclosed in a gorgeous basilica at Aachen,
casing of gilded wood, and * Eginhard, VUa KaroU,
placed aloft at the extremity of ^ The coronation scene is de-.
St. Peter's, just over the spot scribed in all the annals of the
where a bishop's chair would time, to which it is therefore
in the old arrangement of the needless to refer more particu-
basilica have stood. The sarco- larly.
CHAPTER V.
EMPIBE AND POLICY OF CHARLES.
The coronation of Charles is not only the central Chap. V. event of the Middle Ages, it is also one of those very few events of which, taking them singly, it may be said that if they had not happened, the history of the world would have been diBFerent. In one sense indeed it has scarcely a parallel. The assassins of Julius Csesar thought that they had saved Rome from monarchy, but monarchy came inevitable in the next generation. The conversion of Constantino changed the face of the world, but Christianity was spreading fast, and its ultimate triumph was only a question of time. Had Columbus never spread his sails, the secret of the Western sea would yet have been pierced by some later voyager : had Charles V broken his safe-conduct to Luther, the voice silenced at "Wittenberg would have been taken up by echoes elsewhere. But if^the Roman Empire had not been restored in the West in the person of Charles, it would never haye^ been restored at aU^ and the inexhaustible train of consequences for good and for evil that followed could not have been. Why this was so may be seen by examining the history of the next two centuries. In that day, as
56 TEE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. V. through all the Dark and Middle Ages, two forces were striving^ for the mastery. The one was the ^- stinct of separation^ disorder, anarchy, caused by the ungovemed impulses and barbarous ignorance of the great bulk of mankind; the other was that passionate longing of the better minds for a formal nniiy nf ^ g;overnment, which had its historical basis in the memories of the old Roman Empire, and its most constant expression in the devotion to a visible and catholic Church. The former tendency, as every- thing shews, was, in politics at least, the stronger, but the latter, used and stimulated by an extra- ordinary genius like Charles, achieved in the year 800 a victory whose results were never to be lost. When the hero was gone, the returning wave of anarchy and barbarism swept up violent as ever, yet it could not wholly obliterate the past: the Empire, maimed and shattered though it was, had struck its roots too deep to be overthrown by force, and when it perished at last, perished from inner de- cay. It was just because men felt that no one less than Charles djould have won such a triumph over the evils of the time, by framing and establishing a gigantic scheme of government, that the excite- ment and hope and joy which the coronation evoked were so intense. Their best evidence is not perhaps to be found in the records of that time itself, but in the cries of lamentation that broke forth when the Empire began to dissolve towards the dose of the ninth century, in the marvellous legends which attached themselves to the name of Charles the
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 57
Emperor, a hero of whom any exploit was credible*. Chap. v. in the devout admiration wherewith his German suc- cessors looked back to, and strove in all things to imitate, their all but superhuman prototype.
As the event of a.b. 800 made an unparalleled im- ifwpiyrt of pression on those who lived at the time, so has it ^^*^'***' engaged the attention of men in succeeding ages, has been viewed in the most opposite lights, and become the theme of interminable controversies. It is better to look at it simply as it appeared to the men who witnessed it. Here, as in so many other cases, may be seen the errors into which jurists have been led by the want of historical feeling. In rude and un- settled states of society men respect forms and obey facts, while careless of rules and principles. In Eng- . land, for example, in the eleventh and twelfbh cen- turies, it signified very little whether an aspirant to the throne was next lawAil heir, but it signified a great deal whether he had been duly crowned and was supported by a strong party. Regarding the matter thus, it is not hard to see why those who judged the actors of a.d. 8cx) as they would have judged their contemporaries should have misunder- stood the nature of that which then came to pass.
Baronius and'^Bellannine, Spanheim and Conring,
•
* Before the end of the tenth some of them are veiy good
century we find the monk Bene- may be found in the book of the
diet of Soracte ascribing to Monk of St. Gall. Many refer
Charles an expedition to Pa- to his dealings with the bishops,
lestine, and otiier marvellous ex- towards whom he is described
ploits. Archbishop Turpin's ro- as acting like a good-humoured
mance is well known. All the schoolmaster, best stories about Charles — ^and
58 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. V. are advocates bound to prove a thesis, and therefore believing it ; nor does either party find any lack of plausible arguments i'. But civilian and canonist alike proceed upon strict legal principles, and no such principles can be found in the case, or applied to it. Neither the instances cited by the Cardinal from the Old Testament of the power of priests to set up and pull down princes, nor those which shew the earlier Emperors controlling the bishops of Rome, really meet the question. Leo acted not as having alone the right to transfer the crown; the practice of hereditary succession and the theory of popular election would have equally excluded such a claim; he was the spokeisman of the popular will, which, identifying •itself with the sacerdotal power, hated the Greeks and was grateful to the Franks. Yet he was also something more. The act, as it specially affected his interests, was mainly his work, and with- out him would never have been brought about at all. It was natural that a confusion of his secular func- tions as leader, and his spiritual as consecrating priest, should lay the foundation of the right claimed afterwards of raising and deposing monarchs at the will of Christ's vicar. The Emperor was passive throughout ; he did not, as in Lombardy, appear as a conqueror, but was' received by the Pope and the people as a friend and ally. Rome no doubt became his capital, but it had already obeyed him as Patrician, and the greatest fact that stood out
^ Baronius, Ann-^ ad ann. 800; Spanhemius, De ficta' transits- Bellarminus, De translatione tm- tione imperii ; Conringius, De perii Eomani adveraus lUyricum; imperio BoTnano Germamco.
TEE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 59
to posterity from the whole transaction was that Ghaf. y. the crown was bestowed^ was at least imposed^ by the hands of the pontiff. He seemed the trustee and depositary of imperial authority^.
The best way of shewing the thoughts and motives Contempo- of those concerned in the transaction is to transcribe ^^^fos. the narratives of three contemporary, or almost con- temporary annalists, i^o of them German and one Italian. The Annals of Lauresheim say : —
^^And because the name of Emperor had now ceased among the Grreeks, and their Empire was possessed by a woman, it then seemed both to Leo the Pope himself, and to all the holy fathers who were present in the selfsame council, as well as to the rest of the Christian people, that they ought to take to be Emperor Charles king of the Franks, who held Bome herself, where the Caesars had always been wont to sit, and all the other re- gions which he ruled through Italy, and Gaul, and Germany ; and inasmuch as God had given all these lands into his hand, it seemed right that with the help of God and at the prayer of the whole Christian people he should have the name of Emperor also. Whose petition king Charles willed not to refuse, but submitting himself with all humility to God, and at the prayer of the priests and of the whole Christian people, on the day of the nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ he took on himself the name of Emperor, being consecrated by the lord Pope heo^.'^
<< See especially Greenwood, Cathedra Petri, vol. iii. p. 109. * Pertz, Jf . G. H. I
60 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. V. Very similar in substance is the account of the Chronicle of Moissac (ad ann. 8oi) : —
" Now when the king upon the most holy day of the Lord^s birth was rising to the mass after praying before the confession of the blessed Peter the Apostle, Leo the Pope, with the consent of all the bishops and priests and of the senate of the Franks and likewise of the Romans, set a golden *crown upon his head, the Roman people also shouting aloud. And when the people had made an end of chanting the ' Laudes/ he was adored by the Pope after the manner of the Emperors of old. For this also was done by the will of God. For while the said Emperor abode at Rome certain men were brought unto him, who said that the name of Emperor had ceased among the Greeks, and that among them the Empire was held by a woman called Irene, who had by guile laid hold on her son the Emperor, and put out his eyes, and taken the Empire to herself, as it is written of Athaliah in the Book of the Kings ; which when Leo the Pope and all the assembly of the bishops and priests and abbots heard, and the senate of the Franks and all the elders of the Romans, they took counsel with the rest of the Christian people, that they should name Charles king of the Pranks to be Emperor, seeing that he held Rome the mother of empire where the Caesars and Emperors were always used to sit; and that the heathen might not mock the Christians if the name of Emperor should have ceased among the Christians®.''
• Pertz,^.(?.J7. i.
THE HOiT ROMAN EMPIRE. 61
These two accounts axe both £rom a German source : Chap. v. that which follows is Boman^ written probably within some fifty or sixty years of the event. It is taken from the Life of Leo III in the Vita Pontificum Ro^ manarum^ compiled by Anastasius the papal librarian.
'^ After these things came the day of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, and all men were again gathered together in the aforesaid basilica of the blessed Peter the Apostle : and then the gracious and venerable pontiff did with his own hands crown Charles with a very precious crown. Then all the faith&l people of Rome, seeing the defence that he gave and the love that he bare to the holy Roman Church and her Vicar, did by the will of God and of the blessed Peter, the keeper of the keys of the king- dom of heaven, cry with one accord with a loud voice, ^To Charles, the most pious Augustus, crowned of God, the great and peacegiving Emperor, be life and victory.^ While he, before the holy confession of the blessed Peter the Apostle, was invoking divers saints, it was proclaimed thrice, and he was chosen by all to be Emperor of the Romans. Thereon the most holy pontiff anointed Charles with holy oil, and likewise his most excellent son to be king, upon the very day of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ; and when the mass was finished, then after the mass the mo^ serene lord Emperor offered gifts ^J^
' VUcB Povdif.va.'MMT, S-R»I' tori/ The balance of probability
Anastasius in reporting the shout is in his favour, though the weight
of the people omits the word of authorities may seem to be the
* Bomanorum/ which the other other way. annalifits insert after 'impen^
62 THE HOLT ROMAN (UMPIRE.
Chap. V. In these three accounts there is no serious dis- ————— •
crepancy as to the faets^ although the Italian priest,
as is natural, heightens the importance of the part played by the Pope, while the Germans are too anxious to rationalize the event, talking of a synod of the clergy, a consultation of the people, and a formal request to Charles, which the silence of Egin- hard, as well as the other circumstances of the case, forbids us to accept as literally true. Similarly Anastasius passes over the adoration rendered by the Pope to the Emperor, upon which most of the Frankish records insist in a way which puts it beyond doubt. But the impression which the three narratives leave is essentially the same. They all ( shew how little the transaction can be made to wear Im.pre88io\ 2l strictly legal character. The Frankish king does !L*«^. not of his own miffht seize the crown, but rather receives it as coming naturally to him, as the legiti- mate consequence of the authority he already enjoyed. The Pope bestows the crown, not in virtue of any right of his own as head of the Church : he is merely the instrument of God's providence, which has un- mistakeably pointed out Charles as the proper person to defend and lead the Christian commonwealth. The Roman people do not formally elect and appoint, but by their applause accept the chief who is pre- sented to them. The act is conceived of as directly ordered by the Divine Providence which has brought about a state of things that adihits of but one issue, an issue which king, priest, and people have only to recognise and obey ; their personal ambitions, pas-
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 63
sions^ intrigues, sinlring and vanishing in reverential Chap. V. awe at what seems the immediate interposition of Heaven. And as the result is desired by all parties alike, they do not think of inquiring into one an- other's rights, but take their momentary harmony to be natural and necessary, never dreaming of the difficulties and conflicts which were to arise out of what seemed then so simple. And it was just be- cause everything was thus left undetermined, rest- ing not on express stipulation but rather on a sort of mutual understanding, a sympathy of beliefs and wishes which augured no evil, that the event ad- mitted of being afterwards represented in so many different lights. Four centuries later, when Papacy and Empire had been forced into the mortal struggle by which the fate of both was decided, three distinct theories regarding the coronation of Charles will be found advocated by three different parties, all of them plausible, all of them to some extent misleading. The Swabian Emperors held the crown to have been won by their great predecessor as the prize of con- quest, and drew the conclusion that the citizens and bishop of Bome had no rights as against themselves. The patriotic party among the Romans, appealing to the early history of the Empire, declared that by nothing but the voice of their senate and people could an Emperor be lawfully created, he being only their chief magistrate, the temporary depositary of their authority. The Popes pointed to the indis- putable fact that Leo imposed the crown, and argued that as God^s earthly vicar it was his^ and continued
64 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. V. to be their right to give to whomsoever they would au office which was created to be the handmaid of their own. Of these three it was the last view that eventually prevailed^ yet to an impartial eye it cannot claim^ any more than do the two others^ to contarn the whole truth. Charles did not conquer^ nor the /rope give, nor the people elect. .As the act was un- jprecedented so was it illegal; it was a revolt of the i ancient Western capital against a daughter who had become a mistress; an exercise of the sacred right of insurrection^ justified by the weakness and wicked- ness of the Byzantine princes^ hallowed to the eyes of the world by the sanction of Christ^s representa- tive^ but founded upon no law^ nor competent to create any for the future. Was the It is an interesting and somewhat perplexing ques- ^I'^^J^^ tion, how far the coronation scene^ an act as imposing in its circumstances as it was momentous in its re- sults^ was prearranged among the parties. Eginhard tells us that Charles was accustomed to declare that he would not^ even on so high a festival^ have entered the church had he known of the Fope^s intention. Even if the monarch had uttered^ the secretary would hardly have recorded a falsehood long after the motive that might have prompted it had disappeared. Of the existence of that motive which has been most commonly assumed, a fear of the discontent of the Franks who might think their liberties endangered^ little or no proof can be brought from the records of the time, wherein the nation is represented as exult- ing in the new dignity of their chief as an accession
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 65
of grandeur to themselves. Nor can we suppose that Chap. v. Charles'^ disavowal was meant to soothe the offended pride of the Byzantine princes, from whom he had nothing to fear, and who were none the more likely to recognise his dignity, if they should believe it to be not of his own seeking. Yet it is hard to suppose the whole affair a surprise; for it was the goal towards which the policy of the Frankish kings had for many years pointed, and Charles himself, in sending before him to Rome many of the spiritual and temporal magnates of his realm, in summoning thither his son Pipin from the war against the Lombards of Benevento, had shewn that he expected some more than ordinary result from this journey to the imperial city. Alcuin moreover, Alcuin of York, the prime minister of Charles in matters religious and literary, appears from one of his extant letters to have sent as a Christmas gift to his royal pupil a carefully corrected and superbly adorned copy of the Scriptures, with the words ^ ad splendorem imperialis potentise.^ This has commonly been taken for conclusive evidence that the plan had been settled beforehand, and such it would be were there not some reasons for giving the letter an earlier date, and looking upon the word ^imperialis' as a mere magniloquent flourish s. More weight is therefore to be laid upon the arguments supplied by the nature of the case itself. The Pope, whatever his confidence in the sympathy of the people, would never have ventured on so momentous
8 Lorentz, Leben Alcuins. And cf. Dollinger, Das Kaiserthum Karh dea Qrossen und sdner Nachfolger,
66 TH:E holt ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. V. a step until previous conferences had assured him of the feelings of the king^ nor could an act for which the assembly were evidently prepared have been kept a secret. Nevertheless, the declaration of Charles himself can neither be evaded nor set down to mere dissimulation. It is more just to him, and on the whole more reasonable, to suppose that Leo, having satisfied himself of the wishes of the Boman clergy and people as well as of the Frankish magnates, resolved to seize an occasion and place so eminently favourable to his long-cherished plan, while Charles, carried away by the enthusiasm of the moment and seeing in the pontiff the prophet and instrument of the divine will, accepted a dignity which he might have wished to receive at some later time or in some other way. If, therefore, any positive conclusion be adopted, it would seem to be that Charles, although he had probably given a more or less vague consent to the project, was surprised and disconcerted by a sudden fulfilment which interrupted his own care- V-fuUy studied designs. And although a deed which changed the history of the world was in any case no accident, it may well have worn to the Frankish and Roman spectators the air of a surprise. For there were no preparations apparent in the church; the king was not, like his Teutonic successors in the aftertime, led in procession to the pontifical throne : suddenly, at the very moment when he rose from the sacred hollow where he had knelt among the ever- burning lamps before the holiest of Christian relics — ^the body of the prince of the Apostles — ^the hands
C\
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 67
of that Apostle's representative placed upon his head Chap. v. the crown of glory and poiired upon him the oil of sanctification. There was something in this to thrill the beholders with the awe of a divine presence, and make them hail him whom that presence seemed almost visibly to consecrate, the ''pious and peace- giving Emperor, crowned of God/'
The reluctance of Charles to assume the imperial Tfuories of title is ascribed by Eginhard to a fear of the jealous ^f chirUa. hostility of the Greeks, who could not only deny his claim to it, but might disturb by their intrigues his dominions in Italy. Accepting this statement, the problem remains, how is this reluctance to be reconciled with those acts of his which clearly shew hun aiming at the Eoman crown ? An ingenious and probable, if not certain solution, is suggested by a recent historian**, who argues fipom a minute examina- tion of the previous policy of Charles, that while it was the great object of his reign to obtain the crown ' of the world, he foresaw at the same time the oppo- sition of the Eastern Court, and the want of legality ! from which his title would in consequence suffer, ! He was therefore bent on getting from the Byzan- I tines, if possible, a transference of their crown ; if not, j at least a recognition of his own : and he appears to \ have hoped to win this by the negotiations which had been for some time kept on foot with the Empress Irene. Just at this moment came the coronation by
* See a very learned and in- listed by Dr. v. DoUinger of
teresting tract entitled Das Kai^ Municli, to whose kindness I
ierihum KarU des Orosaen und am indebted for a copy. seiner Nachfolger, recently pnb-
F 2,
I
68 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
C^BAP. V. Pope Leo, interrupting these deep-laid schemes, ir- ritating the Eastern Court, and forcing Charles into the position of a rival who could not with dignity adopt a soothing or submissive tone. Nevertheless, he seems not even then to have abandoned the hope of obtaining a peaceful recognition. Irene's crimes did not prevent him, if we may credit TheophanesJ, from seeking her hand in marriage. And when the project of thus uniting the East and West in a single Empire, baffled for a time by the opposition of her minister ^Etius, was rendered impossible by her sub- sequent dethronement and exile, he did not abandon the policy of conciliation until a surly acquiescence in rather than admission of his dignity had been won from the Byzantines Michael and Nicephorus. Defect in Whether, supposing Leo to have been less pre- ^AcT'^mW ^^P^^^^ * cession of the crown, or an acknowledg- JSmperora. ment of the right of the Romans to confer it, could ever have been obtained by Charles is perhaps more than doubtful. But it is clear that he judged rightly in rating its importance high, for the want of it was the great blemish in his own and his successors' dignity. To shew how this was so^ reference mudt be made to the events of a.d. 476. Both the ex- tinction of the Western Empire in that year and its revival in a.d. 800 have been very generally mis- understood in modern times, and although the mis- take is not, in a certain sense, of prsictical importance, yet it tends to confuse history and to blind us to the
^ 'AiroKpiffidpioi vapit Kapo^Wou Koi hwffdt rh, 'EO0& Ka\ rh 'Eorircpio. Ktd Aiomos cdroififvoi (tvx^ycu -^Tlieoph. Chron, a^V Tfp Kapo6Wtp irphs ydfjuty ^
■/
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 69
ideas of the people who acted on both occasions. Chap. Y. When Odoacer compelled the abdication of Romulus Augustulus, he did not abolish the Western Empire as a separate power, but caused it to be reunited with or sink into the Eastern, so that from that time there was, as there had been before Diocletian, a single unbroken Roman Empire. In a.d. 800 the very memory of the separate Western Empire, as it had stood from the death of Theodosius till Odoacer, had long since been lost, and neither Leo nor Charles nor any of their court dreamt of reviving it. They too, like their predecessors, held the Roman Empire to be one and indivisible, and proposed by the coro- nation of the Frankish king not to proclaim a sever- ance of the East and West, but to reverse the act of Constantino, and make Old Rome again the civil as well as the ecclesiastical capital of the Empire that bore her name. Their deed was in its essence illegal, but they sought to give it every semblance of legality : they professed and partly believed that they were not revolting against a reigning sovereign, but legitimately filling up the place of the deposed Con- stantine VI ; the people of the imperial city exercising their ancient right of choice, their bishop his right of consecration.
Their purpose was but half accomplished. They could create but they could not destroy: they set up an Emperor of their own, whose representatives thenceforward ruled the West, but Constantinople retained her sovereigns as of yore ; and Christendom
\ saw henceforth two imperial lines, not as in the time
\ \
70 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. V. before a.d, 476, the conjoint heads of a single realm, 'but rivds^aai-finemies, each denouncing the other as an impostor, each professing to be the only true and lawful head of the Christian Church and people. Although therefore we must in practice speak during the next seven centuries (down till a.d. 1453) ^^ ^^ Eastern and a Western Empire, the phrase is in strictness incorrect, and was one which either court ought to have repudiated. The Byzantines always did repudiate it ; the Latins usually ; although, yielding to facts, they sometimes condescended to employ it themselves. But their theory was al- ways the same. Charles was held to be the leg^- I timate successor, not of Bomulus Augustulus, but I of Basil, Heraclius, Justinian, Arcadius, and all the j Eastern line; and hence it is that in all the annals I of the time and of many succeeding centuries, the \ name of Constantine VI, the sixty-seventh in order 1 from Augustus, is followed without a break by that ; of Charles, the sixty-eighth. Government The maintenance of an imperial line among the %Erav€r^r ^^^^^^ ^^ * continuing protest against the validity of Charleses title. But from their enmity he had little to fear, and in the eyes of the world he seemed to step into their place, adding the traditional dignity which had been theirs to the power that he already enjoyed. North Italy and Rome ceased for ever to own the supremacy of Byzantium, and while the Eastern princes paid a shameful tribute to the Mus- sulman, the Frankish Emperor — as the recognised head of Christendom — received from the patriarch of Jeru-
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 71
salem the keys of the Holy Sepulchre and the banner Chap. V. of Calvary ; the gift of the Sepulchre itself, says Eginhard, from Aaron king of the Persians^. Out of this peaceful intercourse with the great Khalif the romancers created a crusade. Within his own do- minions his sway assumed a more sacred character. Already had his unwearied and comprehensive ac- HU autho- tivity made him throughout his reign an ecclesiastical ^^^^^ no less than a civil ruler, summoning and sitting in ecclesias- councils, examining and appointing bishops, settling by capitularies the smallest points of Church discipline and polity. A synod held at Frankfort in a.d. 794 condemned the decrees of the second council of Nicaea, which had been approved by Pope Hadrian, censured in violent terms the conduct of the By- zantine rulers in suggesting them, and without ex- cluding images from churches, altogether forbade: them to be worshipped or even venerated. Not only did Charles preside in and direct the deliberations of this synod — although legates from the Pope were present — ^he also caused a treatise to be drawn up stating and ui-ging its conclusions; he pressed Ha- drian to declare Constantine VI a heretic for enoun- cing doctrines to which Hadrian had himself con- sented. There are letters of hi^i extant in which he lectures Pope Leo in a tone of easy superiority, ad- monishes him to obey the holy canons, and bids him pray earnestly for the success of the efforts which it is the monarch's duty to make for the subjugation of pagans and the establishment of sound doctrine
k Harun al Baschid ; Eginh. Vita Earolij o. i6.
72 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. V. throughout the Church. Najr, subsequent Popes them- selves^ admitted and applauded the despotic superin- tendence of matters spiritual which he was wont to exercise, and which led some one to give him play^ fully a title that had once been appUed to the Popes themselves, " Episcopus episcoporum/^
Acting and speaking thus when merely king, it may be thought that Charles needed no further title to enhance his power. The inference is in truth rather the converse of this. Upon what he had done already the imperial title must necessarily follow : the attitude of protection and control which he held towards the Church and the Holy See be-" longed, according to the ideas of the time, especially and only to an Emperor. Therefore his coronation was the fitting completion and legitimation of his authority, sanctifying rather than increasing it. We have, however, one remarkable witness to the import-
Sance that was attached to the imperial name, and the enhancement which he conceived his office to have received from it. In a great assembly held at Aachen, 0/A.D.802. ^ jj 80a, the lately-crowned Emperor revised the laws of all the races that obeyed him, endeavouring to harmonize and correct them, and issued a capitulary singular in subject and tone ™. All persons within his dominions, as well ecclesiastical as civil, who have already sworn allegiance to him as king, are thereby commanded to swear to him afresh as Csesar; and all who have never yet sworn, down to the age of twelve,
1 So Pope John YIII in a document quoted by Waitz, DeuU^e Verfasswngs-geachickU, iii "* Pertz, M, 0. H, iii. (legg. I.)
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 73
shall now take the same oath. ^^At the same time it Chap. V.
shall be publicly explained to all what is the force
and meaning of this oath^ and how much more it
includes than a mere promise of fidelity to the
monarches person. Firstly, it binds those who swear
it to live, each and every one of them, according
to his strength and knowledge, in the holy service of
God; since the lord Emperor cannot extend over all
his care and discipline. Secondly, it binds them
neither by force nor &aud to seize or molest any of
the goods or servants of his crown. Thirdly, to do
no violence nor treason towards the holy Church,
or to widows, or orphans, or strangers, seeing that
the lord Emperor has been appointed, after the Lord
and his saints, the protector and defender of all such.^^
Then in similar fashion purity of life is prescribed to
the monks ; homicide, the neglect of hospitality, and
other offences are denounced, the notions of sin and
crime being intermingled and almost identified in a
way to which no parallel can be found, unless it be
in the Mosaic code. There God, the invisible object
of worship, is also, though almost incidentally, the
judge and political ruler of Israel; here the whole
cycle of social and moral duty is deduced from the
obligation of obedience to the visible autocratic head
of the Christian state.
In most of Charles's words and deeds, nor less distinctly in the writings of his adviser Alcuin, may be discerned the working of the same theocratic ideas. Among his intimate friends he chose to be called by the name of David, exercising in reality.
74 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. V. all the powers of the Jewish king ; presiding over " this kingdonpi of God upon earth rather as a second
Constantine or Theodosius than in the spirit and traditions of the Julii or the ria\di. Among his measures there are two which in particular recall the n first Christian Emperor. As Constantine founds so 11 Charles erects on a firmer basis the connection of I Church and State. Bishops and abbots are 9s essen- tial a part of rising feudalism as counts and dukes. Their benefices are held under the same conditions of fealty and the service in war of their vassal tenants, not of the spiritual person himself; they have similar rights of jurisdiction, and are subject alike to the im- perial misau The monarch tries often to restrict the clergy, as persons, to spiritual duties ; quells the in- subordination of the monasteries ; endeavours to bring the seculars into a monastic life by instituting and regulating chapters. But after granting wealth and power, the attempt was vain ; his strong hand with- drawn, they laughed at control. Again, it was by him first that tithes, for which the priesthood had long been pleading, were enforced through his do- minions, and the support of the ministers of religion entrusted to the laws of the state. Influence of /In civil affairs also Charles acquired, with the im- J^^'^^^^^iperial title, a new position. Later jurists labour to Oermany distinguish his power as Roman Emperor from that which he held already as king of the Franks and their subject allies: they insist that his coronation gave him the capital only, that it is absurd to talk of a^ Soman Empire in regions whither the eag'ies had
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPmE. 75
never flown n. In such expressions there seems to Chap.v. lurk either concision ol* misconception. It was not the actual government of the city that Charles ob- tained in A.D. 800 : that his father had already held as Patrician and he had constantly exercised in the same capacity : it was far more than the titular sovereignty of Acme which had hitherto been held by the By- zantines : it was nothing less than the headship of the worlds believed to appertain of right to the law- ful Boman Emperor, whether he reigned on the Bosphorus, the Tiber, or the Bhine. As that head- ship, although never denied, had been in abeyance in the West for several centuries, its bestowal on the king of ^o vast a realm was a change of the first moment, for it made the coronation not merely a transference of the seat of Empire, but a renewal of the Empire itself, a bringing^ back of it firom the world of belief and theory to the world of fact and reality. And since the powers it gave were autocratic and unlimited, it must swallow up all minor claims and dignities : the rights of Charles the Frankish king were merged in those of Charles the successor of Augustus, the lord of the world. That his imperial authority, was theoretically irre- spective of place is clear from his own words and acts, and from all the monuments of that. time. He would not, indeed, have dreamed of treating the free Franks as Justinian had treated slavish Asiatics, nor would the warriors who followed his standard have
n Putter, Historical Develop' so too Conring, and esp. David ment of the German Constitution ; Blondel, Adv, Chiffietium,
76 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. V. brooked sucIl an attempt. Yet even to German eyes
his position must have been altered by the halo of
vague splendour which now surrounded him ; for all,
even the Saxon and the Slave^ had heard of Bome^s
Action of glories, and revered the name of CsBsar. And in his
^rfeg en g£5^^ ^ ^gj^ discordant elements into one body, to
introduce regular gradations of authority, to control the Teutonic tendency to localization by his miasi — officials commissioned to traverse each some part of his dominions, re^Dorting on and redressing the evils they found — and by his own personal progresses, Charles was guided by the traditions of the old Empire. His sway is the revival of order and cul- ture, fusing the West into a compact whole, whose parts are never thenceforward to lose the marks of their connection and half-Roman character, gather- ing up all that is left in Europe of wealth and knowledge, and hurling it with the new force of Christianity on the infidel of the South and the masses of untamed barbarism to the North and East. Ruling the world by the gift of God, and the transmitted rights of the Romans and their Csesar whom Gt)d had chosen to conquer it, he renews the original aggressive movement of the Empire : the civilized world has subdued her invader", and now arms him against savagery and heathendom. Hence the wars, not more of the sword than of the cross, against Saxons, Avars, Slaves, Danes, Spanish Arabs, where monasteries are fortresses and baptism the
o *<
Gnecia capta femm victorem cepit," is repeated in ^^^ con- quest of the Teuton by the Boman.
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 77
badge of submission. The overthrow of the Irmen- Chap. V. suIp, in the first Saxon campaign*!, sums up the changes of seven centuries. The Romanized Teuton destroys the monument of his country^s freedom, for it IS also the emblem of paganism and barbarism. The work of Arminius is undone by his successor.
This, howeVer, is not the only side from which JGTm^s^ Charleses policy and character may be regarded, pra-^hk If the unity of the Church and the shadow of im-l*M»fl'' penal prerogative was one pillar of his power, the other was the Prankish nationality. The Empire was still military, though in a sense strangely dif- ' ferent from that of Julius or Severus. The warlike Pranks had permeated Western Europe ; their primacy was admitted by the kindred tribes of Lombards, Bavarians, Thuringians, Alemanni, and Burgundians ; the Slavic peoples on the borders trembled and paid tribute ; Alfonso of Asturias found in the Emperor a protector against the infidel foe. His influence, if not his exerted power, crossed the ocean : the kings of the Scots sent gifts and called him lord': the restoration of Eardulf to Northumbria, still more of Egbert to Wessex, might furnish a better ground for the claim of suzerainty than many to which his suc-
p The notion that once pre- it stood was fought the battle in
railed that the IrminstLl was the "which Arminius destroyed, as it
" pillar of Hermann," set up on proved for ever, the hopes of
tbe spot of the defeat of Varus, Boman conquest. is now generally discredited : the ^ Eginh. Ann, pillar was only a rude statue of ' Most probably the Scots of
tbe native Gfod Irmin. There Ireland. — ^Eginhard, VUaKwroli,
seems, however, to be no doubt cap. i6. that on Gt near the spot where
78 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. V. cessors had afterwards recourse. As it was by Prank- ish arms that this predominance in Europe which the imperial title adorned and legalized had been won, so was his government Boman in semblance rather than in fact. Not by restoring the lifeless mechanism of the old Empire, but by his own vigorous personal action, and that of his great officers, did he strive to administer and reform. With every eflfort for a strong central government, there is no despotism; each nation retains its laws, its hereditary chiefs, its free assemblies. The conditions granted to the Saxons 9.fter such cruel warfare, conditions so favourable that in the next century their dukes hold the foremost place in Germany, shew how little he desired to make the Franks a dominant caste. General re- He repeats the attempt of Theodoric to breathe Empire, j Teutonic spirit into Boman forms. The conception was magnificent; great results followed its partial execution. Two causes forbade success. The one was the ecclesiastical, especially the Papal power, apparently subject to the temporal, but with a strong and imdefined prerogative which only waited the occasion to trample on what it had helped to raise. The Pope might take away the crown he had be- I stowed, and turn against the Emperor the Church I which now obeyed him. The other was to be found j in the discordance of the Empire^s elements. The J nations were not ripe for settled life or extensive , schemes of polity ; the differences of race, language, * manners, over vast and thinly-peopled lands baffled every attempt to maintain their connection : and
THE HOL 7 ROMAN EMPIRE. 79
when once tte spell of the great mind was with- Chap. V. drawn, the mutually repellent forces began to work, and the mass dissolved into that chaos out of which it had been formed. Nevertheless, the parts separated not as they met, but having all of them undergone influences which continued to act when political con- nection had ceased. For the work of Charles — a genius pre-eminently creative — was not lost in the anarchy that followed: rather are we to regard it as the beginning of a new era, or as laying the foun- dations whereon men continued for many generations to build.
No claim can be more groundless than that which Personal the modern French, the sons of the Latinized Kelt, ^^^^. set up to the Teutonic Charles. At Rome he might assume the chlamys and the sandals, but at the head of his Frankish host he strictly adhered to the cus- toms of his country, and was beloved by his people as the very ideal of their own character and habits^. Of strength and stature almost superhuman, in swimming and hunting unsurpassed; steadfast and terrible in fight, to his friends gentle and condescend- ing ; he was a Roman, much less a Gaul, in nothing but his culture and his width of view, otherwise a Teuton. The centre of his realm was the Rhine ; his capitals Aachen^ and Engilenheim^ ; his army Ger-
• Eginhard, Vita Karoli, cap. 2,:^.
* Ajx-la-Chapelle. See the lines in Pertz beginning, —
*• Urbs Aqupnsis, urbs regalis, SedeR regni principalis, Prima regum curia."
^ Engilenheim, or Ingelheim, lies near the left shore of the Khine between Mentz and Bingen.
80 THE HOLT ROMAUT EMPIRE.
Chap. V. man ; his sympathies as they are shewn in the gather- ing of the old hero-lays^, the composition of a Crer- man grammar^ the ordinance against confining prayer to the three languages^ — Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, — were all for the race from which he sprang, and whose advance, represented by the victory of Aus- tralia, the true Frankish fatherland, over Neustria and Aquitaine, spread a second Germanic wave over the conquered countries. His Em- There were in his Empire, as in his own mind, ptVe and ^^^ elements : those two from the union and mutual
character ^ ' ^ ^ , . . . ^
(jenerally. action and reaction of which modern civilization has arisen. These vast domains, reaching from the Ebro to the Carpathian mountains, from the Eyder to the Liris, were all the conquests of the Prankish sword, and were still governed almost exclusively by viceroys and officers of Prankish blood. But the conception of the Empire, that which made it a State and not a mere mass of subject tribes like those great Eastern dominions which rise and perish in a lifetime — the realms of Sesostris, or Attila, or Timur — ^was inherited from an older and a grander system, was not Teutonic but Roman — Roman in its ordered rule, in its uniformity and precision, in its endeavour to subject the individual to the system : Roman in its effort to realize a certain limited and human perfection, whose very completeness shall exclude the hope of further progress. And the bond, too, by which the Empire was held together was Roman in its origin;, although Roman in a sense
s Eginhardj Vita Karoli, cap. 29.
1
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
81
which would have surprised Trajan or Severus, could Chap. V. it have been foretold them. The ecclesiastical body " was already organized and centralized, and it was in his rule over the ecclesiastical body that the secret of Charles's power lay. Every Christian — Frank, Gaul, or Italian— owed loyalty to the head and de- fender of his religion : the unity of the Empire was \ a reflection of the unity of the Church.
Into a general view of the government and policy of Charles it is not possible here to enter. Yet his legis- lation, his assemblies, his administrative system, his magnificent works, recalling the projects of Alexander and CsBsary, the zeal for education and literature which he shewed in the collecting of manuscripts, the founding of schools, the gathering of eminent men from all quarters around him, cannot be ap- preciated apart from his position a^ restorer of the Western Empire. Like all the foremost men of our race, Charles was all great things in one, and was so ^ great just because the workings of his genius were so harmonious. He was not a mere barbarian warrior any more than he was an astute diplomatist ; there is none * of all his qualities which would not be forced out of its place were we to characterize him chiefly by it. Com- parisons between famous men of different ages are generally as worthless as they are easy : the circum- stances among which Charles lived do not permit us to institute a minute parallel between his greatness and that of those two to whom it is the modem fashion to compare him, nor to say whether he was or
7 Eginhard, cap. 17. G
82 TEE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. V. could have become as profound a politician as Caesar, as skilful a commander as Napoleon^. But neither to the Roman nor to the Corsican was he inferior in that one quality by which both he and they chiefly impress our ii^aginations— that intense, vivid, un- resting energy which swept him over Europe in campaign after campaign; which' sought a field for its workings in theology, science, literature, no less than in politics and war. As it was this wondrous activity that made him the conqueror of Europe, so was it by the variety of his culture that he became her civilizer. From. him,jLJwhose wide deep mind \ the whole mediaeval theory of the world and human life mirrored itself, did mediaeval society take the form and impress which it retained for centuries, and the traces whereof are among us and upon us to this day.
The great Emperor was buried at Aachen, in that basilica which it had been the delight of his later years to erect and adorn with the treasures of ancient art. His tomb under the dome — where now we see an enormous slab, with the words *' Carolo Magno " — was inscribed, ^^ Magnus atque Orthodoxus Imperator^," Poets, fostered by his own zeal, sang of him who had given to the Franks the sway of Romulus*>. The
' It is not a little curious that Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem,
of the three whom the modem Over the tomb of Charles, below
French have taken to be their the central dome (to which the
national heroes all should have Gothic choir we now see was
been foreigners, and two foreign added some centuries later), there
conquerors. hangs a huge chandelier, the gift
*■ This basilica was built upon of Frederick Barbarossa. the model of the church of the ^ "Bomuleum Francis prse-
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 83
gorgeous drapery of romanee gradually wreathed it- Chap. V. self round his name^ till by canonization as a saint he received the highest glory the world or the Church could confer. For the Boman Church claimed^ as she claims still, the privilege which humanity in one form or another seems scarce able to deny itself, of raising to honours almost divine its great departed ; and as in pagan times temples had risen to a deified Emperor, so churches were dedicated to St. Charle- magne. Between Sanctus Carolus and Divus Julius how strange an analogy and how strange a contrast I
stitit imperium/' — ^Eleggr of Er- menta Oermanice ffistoricaf t. i. molduB Nigellu8,in Pertz; Monu- So too Floras the Deacon,—
" Huic etenim cessit etiam gens Bomnla genti, B^norumque simul mater Boma inclyta cessit : Huius ibi princeps regni diademata sumpsit Mnnere apostolico, Christ! munimine fretus."
64
CHAPTER VL
CAROLINGIAN AND ITALIAN EMPEEOES.
Pious,
Chap. VI. Lewis the Pious'*, left sole heir, had been some Zewis the years before associated to his father's power ; his coronation by his own hands denying the need of Papal sanction. Too mild to restrain his turbulent nobles, and thrown by over-conscientiousness into the hands of the clergy, he had reigned few years I when dissensions broke out on all sides. Charles had wished the Empire to continue one, under the supremacy of a single Emperor, but with its several parts, Lombardy, Aquitaine, Austrasia, Bavaria, each a kingdom held by a scion of the reigning house. A scheme dangerous in itself, and rendered more so by the absence or neglect of regular rules of succession, could with difficulty have been managed by a wise and firm monarch. Lewis tried in vain to satisfy his sons (Lothar, Lewis, and Charles) by dividing and redividing: they rebelled; he was deposed, and forced by the bishops to do penance ; again restored, but without power, a tool in the
* Usage has established this heajrted' would better express translation of ' Hludowicus the meaning of the epithet. }{^ Pius,* but * gentle' or *kind-
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 85
hands of contending fections. On his death the sons Chap. VI. flew to arms^ and the first of the dynastic quarrels of modern Europe was fought out on the field of Fontenay. In the partition treaty of Verdun which Partition followed, the Teutonic principle of equal division ^^ g^"*** among heirs triumphed over the Roman one of the transmission of an indivisible Empire : the practical sovereignty of all three brothers was admitted in their respective territories, a barren precedence only^ reserved to Lothar, with the imperial title which he already enjoyed* A more important result was the / separation of the Gaulish and German nationalities./ Their difierence of feeling, shewn already in the sup- port of Lewis by the Germans against the Gallo- Franks and the Church b, took now a permanent shape : modem Germany proclaims the era of a.d. 843 the beginning of her national existence, and cele- brated its thousandth anniversary twenty-two years ago. To Charles the Bald was given Francia Occi- dentalis, that is to say, Neustria and Aquitaine; to Lothar, who as Emperor must possess the two capi- tals, Rome and Aachen, a long and narrow kingdom stretching from the North Sea to the Mediterranean : Lewis received all east of the Rhine, Franks, Saxons, Bavarians, Austria, Carinthia, with possible supre- macies over Czechs and Moravians beyond. Through- out these regions German was spoken ; through Charles's kingdom a corrupt tongue, equally re-
^ Von Hanke adduces this the spiritual power. — HUtory to shew the aversion of the of Germany during the R^ofrmor Germans to the pretensions of lion : Introduction.
86 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. VI. moved from Latin and from modem French. Lo-
""" thar's, being mixed and having no national basisj
was the weakest of the three, and soon dissolved
into the separate sovereignties of Italy, Burgundy,
and Lotharingia, or, as we call it, Lorraine.
On the tangled history of the period that follows
we can but touch. After passing from one branch
of the Carolingian line to another, the imperial
sceptre was. at last possessed and disgraced by
Charles the Fat, who imited all the dominions of
his great-grandfather. This unworthy heir could not
avail himself of recovered territory to strengthen
or defend the expiring monarchy. With him the
Ejid of Empire of the West ended in 888, The Germans,
;^r stiU atta^^bed to the ancient Ime, chose Arnnlf, an
Empire of illegitimate Carolingian, for their king: he entered
A.D. 888! Italy and was crowned Emperor by his partizan
Pope Formosus, in 894. But Germany, divided and
helpless, was in no condition to maintain her power
over the Southern lands : Amulf retreated in haste,
leaving Rome and Italy to sixty years of stormy
independence.
That time was indeed the nadir of order and civili- zation. From all sides the torrent of .barbarism i which Charles the Great had stemmed was rushing \down upon his Empire. The Saracen wasted the Mediterranean coasts, and sacked Rome herself. The Dane and Norseman swept the Atlantic and the North Sea, pierced France and Germany by their rivers, burning, slaying, carrying off into captivity : pouring through the Straits of Gibraltar, they fell
f-
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 87
upon Province and Italy. By land, while Wends Chap. VI. and Czechs and Obotrites threw off the German yoke and threatened the borders, the wild Hungarian bands, pressing in from the steppes of the Caspian, dashed over Germany like the flying spray of a new wave of barbarism, and carried the terror of their battleaxes to the Apennines and the ocean. Under such strokes the already loosened fabric swiffcly dissolved. No one thought of common defence or wide organization : the strong built castles, the weak became their bondsmen, or took shelter imder the cowl : the governor, count, abbot, or bishop tightened his grasp, turned a delegated into an in- dependent, a personal into a territorial authority, and hardly owned a distant and feeble suzerain. The grand vision of a universal Christian Empire was utterly lost in the isolation, the antagonism, the increasing localization of aU powers : it might seem but a passing gleam from an older and better world.
In Germany, the greatness of the evil worked The Ger- at last its cure. When the male line of the Eastern ^ ^'''^' branch of the Carolingians had ended in Lewis, son of Arnulf, the chieftains chose and the people accepted Conrad the Franconian, and after him Henry the Saxon duke, both representing the female line of Charles. Henry laid the foundations of a firm Henry the monarchy, driving back the Magyars and Wends, ^^^^' recovering Lotharingia, founding towns to be centres of orderly life and strongholds against Hungarian irruptions. He^ad meant to claim at Bome his
88 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. VI. kingdom^s rights, rights which Conrad's weakness had at least asserted by the demand of tribute ; but death overtook him, and the plan was left to be fulfilled by Otto his son.
The Holy Eoman Empire is the creation of Otto the Great. .It professed to prolong, it is indeed inseparable from Charles's revived Empire of the West; the two are nevertheless very different in character, extent, and basis. Before Otto's descent into Italy is described, something must be said of the condition of that coimtry, where circumstances had almost restored the plan of Theodoric, made it one kingdom, and restricted the imperial title to its sovereign.
Italian The bestowal of the purple on Charles the Great
mperors. ^^ ^^^ really that ^' translation of the Empire from the Greeks to the Franks," which it was afterwards described as having been. It was not meant to settle the oflSce in one nation or one dynasty : there was but an extension of that principle of the equality of all B/omans which had made Trajan and Maximin Emperors. The '^ arcanum im,j>erii/' whereof Tacitus speaks, '^ posse prificipem alibi qimm Ranue^ri^/^ had become alium quam Ramanum ; the senate, people, and pontiff of the capital had in the vacancy of the Eastern throne asserted their ancient rights of elec- tion^ and while attempting to reverse the act of Constantine, had re-established the division of Va- lentinian. The dignity was therefore in strictness
« Tac. ffist. i. 4.
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
89
personal to Charles ; in point of fact, and by consent, Chap. VI. hereditarily transmissible, just as it had formerly be- come in the families of Constantino and Theodosius. To the Frankish crown or nation it was by no means legally attached^ though they migUt think it so. Hence, when the line of Carolingian Emperors ended in Charles the Fat, the rights of Rome and Italy revived, and there was nothing to prevent their choosing whom they would. At that memorable era the four kingdoms which this prince had united fell asunder; West France was never again united to Germany; East France (Germany) chose Amulf ; Cis- Jurane Burgundy and Provence (afterwards the king- dom of Arles<*) elected Boso®; Italy was divided be- tween the parties of Beren^ir of Friuli and Giiido of Spoleto. The former was chosen king by the estates of Lombardy; the latter, and on his speedy death his soil Lambert, was crowned Emperor by the Pope. Amulf^s descent chased them away and vindicated the claims of the Franks, but in his flight Italy and the anti-German faction at Borne became again free. Berengar was made king of Italy, and after- wards Emperor. Lewis of Burgundy, son of Boso, renounced his fealty to Amulf, and procured the im- perial dignity, whose vain title he retained through
* For an account of the va- rioas applications of the name Burgundy, see Appendix, Note A.
« The accession of Boso took place in a.d. 877, eleven years before Charles the Fat's death. But the new kingdom could not
be considered legally settled un- til the latter date, and its esta- blishment is at any rate a part of that general break-up of the great CaroUngian Empire whereof A.l>. 888 marks the crisis. See Ap- pendix A at the end.
90 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. VI. years of misery and exile, till a.d. 928 f. None of these Emperors were strong enough to rule well even in Italy; beyond it they were not so much as recog- nized. The crown had become a bauble with which unscrupulous Popes dazzled the vanity of princes whom they summoned to their aid, and soothed the credulity of their more honest supporters. The demoralization and concision of Italy, the shameless profligacy of Rome and her pontiffs during this period, were enough to prevent a true Italian king- dom from being built up on the basis of Roman choice and national unity. Italian indeed it can scarcely be called, for these Emperors were still in blood and manners Teutonic, and akin rather to their Transalpine enemies than their Romanic sub- jects. But Italian it might soon have become under a vigorous rule which should have organized it within and knit it together to resist attacks from without. And therefore the attempt to estabhsh such a king- dom is remarkable, for it might have had great con- sequences; might, if it had prospered, have spared Italy much suffering and Germany endless waste of strength and blood. He who irom the siimmit of Milan cathedral sees across the misty plain the gleaming turrets of its icy wall sweep in a great arc from North to West, may well wonder that a land which nature has so severed from its neighbours should, since history begins, have been always the victim of their intrusive tyranny.
' Lewis had been surprised by forced to take refuge in his own Berengar at Verona, blinded, and kingdom of Provence.
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 91
In A. D. 91^4 died Berengar, the last of these Chap. VI. phantom Emperors. Hugh of Burgundy, and Lo- Addheid, thar his son, had been kings of Italy, if puppets ^^f^ ^f in the hands of a riotous aristocracy can be so called. Bome was meanwhile ruled by the consul or senator Alberics, who had renewed her never quite extinct republican institutions, and in the degradation of the papacy was almost absolute in the city. Lothar d3dng, his widow Adelheid^ was soiight in marriage by Berengar II, the new Italian monaTcL A gleam of romance is shed on the Em- Otto's;^ pire^s revival by her beauty and her adventures. ^^^^^^"^ Rejecting the odious alliance, she was seized byA.D. 951. Berengar, escaped with difficulty from the loath- some prison where his barbarity had confined her, and appealed to Otto the German king, the model of that knightly virtue which was beginning to shew itself after the fierce brutality of the last age. He listened, descended into Lombardy by the Adige valley, espoused the injured queen, and forced Berengar to hold his kingdom as a vassal of the Prankish crown. That prince was turbulent and faithless; new complaints reached ere long his liege lord, and envoys from the Pope offered Otto the imperial title if he would re-enter and pacify Italy. The proposal was well-timed. Men still thought, Intritcuion as they had thought in the centuries before the^^^^^^'^ Carolingians, that the Empire was suspended, not Otto.
8 Alberic is called yariously Bndolf, king of Trans-Jurane
senator, consul, patrician, or Burgundy. She was at this time
prince of the Bomans. ' in her nineteenth year.
b Adelheid was daughter of
92 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. VI. extinct ; and the desire to see its effective power
restored^ the belief that without it the world could never be right, might seem better grounded than Motives fw it had been before the coronation of Charles. Then ^^/^the imperial name had recalled only the faint memories of Roman majesty and order ; now it was also associated with the golden age of the first Frankish Emperor, when a single firm, and just /hand had guided the State, reformed the Church, repressed the excesses of power: when Christianity had advanced against heathendom, civilizing as she went, fearing neither Hun nor Paynim. One an- nalist tells us that Charles was elected ^' lest the pagans should insult the Christians, if the name of Emperor should have ceased among the Chris- tians ^^' The motive would be bitterly enforced by the calamities of the last fifty years. In a time of disintegration, confusion, strife, all the longings of every wiser and better soul for unity, for peace and law, for some bond to bring Christian men and Christian states together against the common enemy of the faith, were but so many cries for the restoration of the Roman Empire \ These were 'h the feelings that on the field of Merseburg broke
^ Chron. MoUi., in Pertz ; M. Migne), a bitter lament over the
G.H. i. 305. dissolution of the Carolingian
* See especially the poem of Empire. It is too long for quo-
Florus the Deacon (printed in tation. I give four lines here: — the Benedictine collection and m
** Quid faciant populi quos ingens alluit Hister, Quos Bhenus Rhodanusque rigant, Ligerisve, Padusve, Quos omnes dudum tenuit concordia nexos, Foedere nunc rupto divortia moesta &tigant.*'
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE, 93
forth in the shout of '^ Henry the Emperor*/^ these Chap.vi. the hopes of the Teutonic host when after the great deKverance of the Leehfeld they greeted Otto, con- queror of the Magyars, as ^'Imperator Augustus, Pater Patriae ^" The anarchy which an Emperor )n<mditi<m was needed to heal was at its worst in Italy, deso- 'f^^v- lated by the feuds of a crowd of petty princes. A succession. of infamous Popes, raised by means yet more infamous, the lovers and sons of Theodora and Marozia, had disgraced the chair of the Apostle, and though Rome herself might be lost to decency, Latin Christendom was roused to anger and alarm. Men had not yet learned to satisfy their consciences by separating the person from the office. The rule of Alberic had been succeeded by the wildest confusion, and demands were raised for the renewal of that imperial authority which all admitted in theory™, and which nothing but the resolute opposition of Alberic himself had prevented Otto from claiming in 951. From the Byzantine Empire, whither Italy was more than once tempted to turn, nothing could be hoped ; its dangers from without were aggravated by the ' plots of the court and the seditions of the capital ; it was becoming more and more alienated from the West by the Photian schism and the question regarding the Procession of the Holy Ghost, which that quarrel had started. Germany was extending and consoli- dating herself, had escaped domestic perils, and might think of reviving ancient claims. No one
1 Witnkind, AnnaleSy in Tertz, peratoria potestate in urhe Boma,** ™ Cf. esp. the **JAbdlu8 de im- in Pertz.
94 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. VI. could be more willing to revive them than Otto the Great. His ardent spirit, after waging a bold and successful struggle against the turbulent mag- j^es of his German realm, had engaged him in wars with the surrounding nations, and was now captivated hj the vision of a wider sway and a loftier world - embracing dignity. Nor was the prospect which the papal offer opened up less wel- come to his people. Aachen, their capital, was the ancestral home of the house of Pipin : their sovereign titled himself king of the Franks, in opposition to those of the Western branch, whose Teutonic cha- racter was disappearing among the Romans of Gaul ; they held themselves in every way the true repre- sentatives of the Carolingian power, and accounted the period since ArnulPs death nothing but an interregnum which had suspended but not impaired their rights over Bome. "For so long,^^ says a . writer of the time, " as there remain kings of the Franks, so long will the dignity of the Roman Empire not wholly perish, seeing that it will abide in its kings".'^ The recovery of Italy was therefore to German eyes a righteous as well as a glorious design; approved by the Church who had lately been negotiating with Rome on the subject of mis- sions to the heathen; embraced by the people, who
^ "Licet videamus Bomano- toto non peribit, quia stabit in
rum regnum in maxima parte regibus suis." — I^ber de Anti-
jam destructimi, tamen quamdiu christo, addressed by Adso, abbot
reges Francorum duraverint qui of Moutier-en-Der, to queen G»er-
Bomanum imperium tenere de- berga (dr. a J). 950). bent, dignitas Romani imperii ex
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE, 95
saw in it an accession of strength to their young Chap. VI. kin^om. Everything smiled on Otto's enterprise^ and the connexion which was destined to bring so much strife and woe to Germany and to Italy was welcomed by the wisest of both countries as the . beginning of a better era°.
Whatever were Otto's own feelings, whether or Descent of not he felt that he was sacrificing, as modem writers ^ ?^ have thought that he did sacrifice, the greatness oi Italy, his German kingdom to the lust of universal do- minion, he shewed no hesitation in his acts. De- scending from the Alps with an overpowering force, he was crowned king of Italy at Pavia ; and, having first taken an oath to protect the Holy See and respect the liberties of the city, advanced to Rome. There, with Adelheid his queen, he was crowned hj ffiscorma- John XII, on the second day of February, a.d. 96a. *jf^.^ The details of his election and coronation are unfor- 962. tunately still more scanty than in the case of his great predecessor. Most of our authorities represent the act as of the Pope's favour p, yet it is plain that the consent of the people was still thought an essen- tial part of the ceremony, and that Otto rested affcer all on his host of conquering Saxons. Se this as it
^ SigoniuS; J)e Regno Italias, 963. " Benedictionem promeruit
P " A papa imperator ordi- ijuperialem/' — Thietmar. ,'* Ac-
natur/' says Hermannus Con- clamatione totius Komani popuH
tractus. ** Dominum Ottonem, ab apostolico Joluuine, filio Al-
ad hoc usque vocatum regem, berici, imperator et Augustus
non solum Bomano sed et poene vocatur et ordinatur." — Continu- .•
totius Europe populo acclamante ator Beginonis. And similarly
imperatorem consecravit Angus- the other annalists, turn.** — Annal, QuedUrib., ad ann.
96 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. VI. may, there was neither question raised nor opposition made in Rome ; the usual courtesies and promises were exchanged between Emperor and Pope, the latter owning himself a subject, and the citizens swore for the future to elect no pontiff without Otto's consent.
CHAPTEE VIL
THEORY or THE MEDUEYiX EMPIRE.
These were the events and circumstances of the Ch. VII. time. Let us now look at the causes. The restora- whytlve tion of the Empfre by Charles may seem to be suffi- '^^'^ ^
Ciently accounted for by the wi^th of hisf finngnests. wasdedred.
by the peculiar connexion which alreafc, subsisted between him anTihe Roman Church, by his com- mandrng person^jjjjgfacter^ by the temporary va- cancy of t^^.g^ilT^^Tlf^T^^ throne. The causes oi its revivalun^r Otto musl be sought deeper. Making every allowance for the favouring incidents oH which we have dwelt^ there must have been some further influence at work to draw him and his successors, Saxon and Prankish kings, so far from home in pur- suit of a ba,rren crown, to lead the Italians to accept the dominion of a stranger and a barbarian, to make the Empire itself appear through the whole Middle Age not what it seems now, a gorgeous anachronism, but an institution divine and necessary, having its foundations in the very nature and order of things. The Empire of the elder Rome had been splendid in its life, yet its judgment was written in the misery to which it had brought the provinces, and the help- lessness that had invited the attacks of the barbarian.
H
98 TEE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. vit. Now^ as we at least can see, it had long been dead, and the course of events was adverse to its revival. Its actual representatives, the Roman people, were a turbulent rabble, sunk in a profligacy notorious even in that guilty age. Yet not the less for all this did men cling to the idea, and strive through long ages to stem the irresistible time-current, fondly believing that they were breasting it even while it was sweep- ing them ever faster and faster away from the old order into a region of new thoughts, new feelings, new forms of life. Not till the days of the Reforma- tion was the illusion dispelled.
Medieval The explanation is to be found in the state of the human mind during these centuries. The Middle ^ Ages were essentially unpolitical. Ideas as familiar o the commonwealths of antiquity as to ourselves, ideas of the common good as the object of the State, of the rights of the people, of the comparative merits of different forms of government, were to them, though sometimes carried out in fact, in their spe- culative form unknown, perhaps incomprehensible. Feudalism was the one great institution to which those times gave birth, and feudalism was ?■ pn---^ - and a legal system, only indirectly and by r-ons ^[uence a political one. Yet the human iiJi'l, ^< far from being idle, was in certain directions ii^v more active; nor was it possible for it to rciix<w* without general conceptions regarding the relations of men to each other in this world. Such concep- tions were neither made an expression of the actual present condition of things nor drawn from an indue-
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 99
bion of the pjist ; they were partly inherited from the Ch. VII. system that had preceded^ partly evolved from the principles of that metaphysical theology which was ripening into scholasticism. Now the two great I ideas which expiring antiquity bequeathed to the I ages that followed were those of a World-Monarchy \ and a World-Eeligion. I
Before the conquests of Rome, men, with little TleWoTU- knowledge of each other, with no experience of wide political union a, had held differences of race to be natural and irremovable barriers. Similarly, religion appeared to them a matter purely local and national ; and as there were gods of the hills and gods of the valleys, of the land and of the sea, so each tribe rejoiced in its peculiar deities, looking on the natives of another country who worshipped other gods as Gentiles, natural foes, unclean beings. Such feel- ings,, if keenest in the East, frequently shew them- selves in the early records of Greece and Italy : in Homer the hero who wanders over the unfruitful sea glories in sacking the cities of the stranger b; the primitive Latins have the same word for a foreigner and an enemy: the exclusive systems of Egypt,
* Empiries like the Persian did their own princes, and were nothing to assimilate the subject bound only to serve in the races, who retained their own armies and fill the treasury of laws and customs, sometimes the Great King.
* Od. iii. 7« :—
. , . . ^ fitv^iSiois it,\A\riiT$€, old re Xi}i(rr|p€5, iTCtlp &\a, rolr^ iLK6»prat i^X^^ ''Ft^fBefitvoi, Kcuchv dXXo8airoiox pipoprts ;
Cf. Od. ix. 39: and the Hymn to the Pythian Apollo, 1. 274. So in H. V. 214, itW^rptos <^5,
' H 2,
100 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. VII. Hindostan^ China, are only more violent expres- sions of the belief which made Athenian philosophers look on a state of war between Greeks and barbarians as natural<^, and defend slavery on the same ground of the original diversity of the races that rule and the races that serve. The Roman dominion giving to many nations a common speech and law, smote this feeling on its political side; Christianity more eflTectually banished it from the soul by substituting for the variety of local pantheons the belief in one God, before whom all men are equal <*.
Coincides It is on the religious life that nations repose.
IrorM^ Because divinity was divided, humanity had been
Empire, divided likewise ; the doctrine of the unity of God now enforced the unity of man, who had been created \n His image e. The first lesson of Christianity was love: a love that was to join in one body those whom suspicion and prejudice and pride of race had hitherto kept apart. There was thus formed by the new religion a community of the feithful, a Holy Empire, designed to gather all men into its bosom, and standing opposed to the manifold polytheisms of the older world, exactly as the universal sway of the Caesars was contrasted with the innimierable kingdoms and republics that had gone before it. The analogy of the two made them appear parts
« Plato, in the beginning of Gal. iii. 38 ; Epb. ii. ii, sqq. ; iv.
the Lawd, represents it as na- 3-6'; Col. iii. ir.
tural between all states : iroAf- • This is drawn out by Lau-
fibs 0^ci ^dpx^i trphs axdaas rhs rent, Histoire du Droit dea gens;
x6\€is, and Mgidi, Der Fiirstenrath nach
^ See especially Acts xvii. 16 ; dem LunevUler Frieden,
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
101
of one great world-moveiney\t ^w^rfl ijD^^y^ the Ch. VII. coincidence of their boundaries^ which had begtin before Constantine^ lasted long enough after him to associate them indissolubly together^ and make the names of iloman and Christian convertible ^ QScumenical councils, where the whole spiritual body gathered itself from every part of the temporal realm under the presidency of the temporal head^ presented the most visible and impressive examples of their connexion. The language of civil government was, throughout the West, that of the sacred writings and of worship ; the greatest mind of his generation consoled the faithful for the. fall of their earthly commonwealth Rome, by describing to them its successor and representative, the "city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God %/'
Of these two parallel unities, that of the political Preserm- and that of the reKgious society, meeting in the ^^^"^j^ higher unity of all Christians, which may be indif- Church, ferently called Catholicity or Romanism (since in that day those words would have had the same meaning), that only which had been entrusted to the Church's keeping survived the storms of the
' " Eonianoe enim yocitant ho- mines nostrae religionis." — Gre- gory of Tours, quoted by jEgidi, jfrom A. F. Pott, Bssay on the Words * Rbmischf'' *Jtomani8ch,' * Roman* * RomanUsch* So in the Middle Ages, 'P»/iaiOi is used to mean Christiaiis, as opposed to^f.hXfiPfs, heathens.
Cf. Ducange, *'Bomani olim dlcti qui afias Christiani vel
etiam Catholid."
K Augustine, in the De Civi- tote Dei, His influence, great through all the Middle Ages, was greater on no one than on Charles. — " Delectabatur et libris sancti Augustini, prsecipueque his qui De Civitate Dei prseti- tulati sunt."— Eginhard, VUa Karcii, cap. 24.
^
A
102 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. VII. fifth century. Many reasons may l)e assigned for the firmness with which she clung to it. Seeing one institution after another falling to pieces around her, seeing how countries and cities were being severed from each other by the irruption of strange tribes and the increasing difficulty of communica- tion, she strove to save religious fellowship by ^strengtheniiig the ecclesiastical organization, by drawing tighter every bond of outward union. Necessities of faith were still more powerful. Truth, it was said, is one, and as it must bind into one body all who hold it, so it is only by continuing in that body that they can preserve it* Thus with the growing rigidity of dogma, which may be traced from the councQ of Jerusalem to the council of Trent, there had arisen the idea of supplementing^ revelation by tradition as a source of doctrine, of exalting the universal conscience and beUef above the individual, and allowing the soul to approach God only through the universal consciousness, re- Mediceval presented by the sacerdotal order : principles still Theology maintained by one branch of the Church, and for
requtres the . ^ , .
One Visible some at least of which far weightier reasons could ChurJ^ be assigned then, in the paucity of written records and the blind ignorance of the mass of the people, than any to which their modern * advocates have recourse. There was another cause yet more deeply seated, and which it is hard adequately to describe. It was not exactly a want of faith in the unseen, nor a shrinking fear which dared not look forth on the universe alone: it was rather the powerlessness of
TEE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 103
tlie uittrained mind to realize the idea as an idea and Ch. Vll. live in it : it was the tendency to see everything in the concrete^ to turn the parable into a fact, the doctrine into its most literal application, the symbol into the essential ceremony; the tendency which in- truded earthly Madonnas and saints between the worshipper and the spiritual Deity, and could satisfy its devotional feelings only by visible images even of these : which conceived of man^s aspirations and temptations as the result of the direct action of angels and devils : which expressed the strivings of the soul after purity by the search for the Sangreal : which in the Crusades sent myriads to win by earthly arms the sepulchre at Jerusalem of Him whom they could not serve in their own spirit nor approach by their own prayers. And therefore it was that the whole fabric of mediaeval Christianity rested upon the idea of the Visible Church. Such a Church could be in nowise local or limited. To acquiesce in the establishment of National Churches would have appeared to those men, as it must always appear when scrutinized, contradictory to the nature of a religious body, opposed to the genius of Chris- tianity, defensible, when capable of defence at all, only as a temporary resource in the presence of insu- perable difficulties. Had this plan on which so many have dwelt with complacency in later times, been proposed either to the primitive Church in its ad- versity or to the dominant Church of the ninth cen- tury, it would have been rejected with horror; but since there were as yet no nations, the plan was one
104 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE,
Ch. vn. which did not and could not present itself. The Visible Church was therefore the Church Universal, the whole congregation of Christian men dispersed throughout the world. Idea of Now of the Visible Church the emblem and stay ^t ^^ ""^^ priesthood; and it wa« by them, in whom hdd by the dwelt whatever of learning and thought was left in ^^' Europe, that the second great idea whereof we' have spoken — ^the belief in one universal temporal state — was preserved. As a matter of fact, that State had perished out of the West, and it might seem their interest to let its memory be lost. They, however, thought not so. So far from feeling themselves op- posed to the civil authority in the seventh and eighth centuries, as they came to do in the twelfth and thir- teenth, the clergy were fully persuaded that its main- tenance was indispensable to their own welfare. They were, be it remembered, Romans themselves, living by the Roman law, using Latin as their proper tongue, and imbued with the idea of the historical con- nexion of the two powers. And by them chiefly was that idea expounded and enforced for many genera- tions, by none more earnestly than by Alcuin of York, the adviser of Charles ^. The limits of those two powers had become confounded in practice : bishops were princes, the leaders of their flocks in
^ " Quapropter universorum donante pietate eadem sancts
precibus fidelium optandum est, pacis et perfectse carifcatis om- )
ut in omnem gloriam vestram ex- nes ubique regat et custodiat
tendatur imperium, ut scilicet ca- unitas." Quoted by Waitz
tbolica fides . . . veraciter in una {De:wtsche Verfassungsgesehiehte,
confessione cunctorum cordibus iii. 182) from an unprinted letter
infigatur, quatenus summi Begis of Alcuin.
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 105
war, the chief ministers of the sovereign : kings Ch. VII. were accustomed to summon Ecclesiastical councils; and appoint to ecclesiastical offices.
But like the unity of the Church, the doctrine oi Influence of a universal monarchy had a theoretical as well as^^y^J^/ an historical basis, and may be traced up to those tlu time metaphysical ideas out of which the system we call t^^y of B.ealism developed itself. The beginnings of phi- ^ WorU- losophy in those times were logical; and its first efforts were to distribute and classify — system, sub- ordination, uniformity, appeared all that was de- sirable in thought as in life. The search after causes became ^a search afber principles of classification ; since simplicity and truth were held to consist rfot in an analysis of thought into its elements,' nor in an observation of the process of its growth, but rather in a sort of genealogy of notions, a state- ment of the relations of classes as containing or ex- cluding each other. These classes, genera or species, were not themselves held to be conceptions formed by the mind firom phenomena, nor mere accidental aggregates of objects grouped under and called by some common name ; they were real things, existing independently of the individuals who composed them, recognised rather than created by the human mind. In this view. Humanity is an essential qualitj^pre- sent in all men, and making them what they ^: as regards it they are therefore not many but one, the differences between individuals being no more than accidents. The whole truth of their being lies in the universal property, which alone has a
106 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. vii.^ permanent and independent exifitence. The common nature of the individuals thus gathered into one Being is typified in its two aspects, the spiritual and the secular, by two persons, theJWodd-Eriest and the World-Monaroh, who present on earth a similitude of the Divine unity. For, as we have seen, it was only through its concrete and symbolic expression that a thought could then be appre- hended ^ Although it was to unity in religion that the clerical body was both by doctrine and by practice attached, they found this inseparable from the corresponding unity in politics. They saw that every act of man has a soeial-fm^ii^ublic as well as a moral and personal bearing, and concluded that the rules which directed and the powers which re- warded or punished must be parallel and similar, not so much two powers as different manifestations of one and the same. That the souls of all Christiaji men should be guided by one hierarchy, rising
* A curious illustration of this ecclesia spirituallter mirificatur, tendency of mind is afforded by augmentatur. et regitur. His the descriptions we meet with of itaque tribus, tanquam funda- Leaming or Theology {Btudium) mento, pariete et tecto, eadem as a concrete existence, having a ecclesia tanquam materialiter visible dwelling in the Univer- proHcit. £t sicut ecclesia ma- sity of Paris. The three great terialis uno tantum fundamento powers which rule human life, et uno tecto eget, parietibus vero says one writer, the Popedom, quatuor, ita imperium quatuor the Empire, and Learning, have habet parietes, hoc est, quatuor been severally entrusted to the imperii sed66,Aquisgranum, Are- three foremost nations of Europe: latum, Mediolanum, Bomam." Italians, Germans, French. "His — Jordams Chronica; in Sobar- siquidem tribus, scilicet sacerdo- dius, SyUoge Tractatwum. And tio imperio et studio, tanquam see Dollinger, Die Vergcmgenheit tribus virtutibus, videlicet natu- und Gegemoart der JcatTioliscken rali vitali et sdentiali, catholica Theohgie, p. 8.
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
107
through successive grades to a supreme head, while Ch. YII. for their deeds they were answerable to a multitude of local, unconnected, mutually irresponsible poten- tates^ appeared to them necessarily opposed to the Divine order. As they could not imagine, nor value if they had imagined, a communion of the saints without- its expression in a visible Church, so in matters temporal they recognised no brotherhood of spirit without the bonds of form, no universal humanity save in the image of a universal State ^. In this, as in so much else, the men of the Middle Ages were the slaves of the letter, unable, with all their aspirations, to rise out of the concrete, and prevented by the very grandeur and boldness of their conceptions from carrying them out in prac- tice against the enormous obstacles that met them.
Deep as this belief had struck its roots, it might The ideal inever have risen to maturity nor sensibly affected the posed^he )rogress of events, had it not gained in the preexist- embodied
ice of the monarchy of Rome a definite shape and ^^^ Em- a\ definite purpose. It was chiefly by means of thel^^^*
ipacy that this came to pass. When under Con- stantino the Christian Church was framing her or- ganization on the model of the state which protected
?:>
-•>
k " Una est sola respublica to- tius popull Christiani, ergo de necessitate erit .et unus solus princeps et rex illius reipublicse, statutiis et stabilitus ad ipsius fidei et populi Christiani dUata- tionem et defensionem. Ex qua ratione concludit etiam Augus- tinus {De XHviiate Dei, lib. xix.) quod extra ecclesiam nunquam
fuit nee potuit nee poterit esse verum imperium, etsi fuerint im* peratores qualitercumque et se- cundum quid, non simpliciter, qui fuerunt extra fidem Catho- licam et ecclesiam." — Engelbert, De Ortu et Fine imperii Momani (circ. 1310).
In this *'de necessitate'* every- thing is included.
108 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. VII. her/ the bishop of the metropolis perceived and im- proved the analogy between himself and the head of the civil government. The notion that the chair of Peter was the imperial throne of the Church had dawned upon the Popes very early in their history, and grew stronger every century under the operation of causes already specified. Even before the 'Empire of the West had fallen, St. Leo the Great could boast » that to Rome, exalted by the preaching of the chief
of the Apostles to be a holy nation, a chosen people, a priestly and royal city, there had been appointed a spiritual dominion wider than her earthly sway*. In A.D. 476 Rome ceased to be the political capital of the Western countries, and the Papacy inheriting no small part of the Emperor^s power, drew to herself the reverence which the name of the city still com- manded, until by the middle of the eighth century she had perfected in theory a scheme which made her the exact counterpart of the departed despotism, the centre of the hierarchy, absolute mistress of the Christian world. The character of that scheme is best set forth in the singular document, most stu- pendous of all the mediaeval forgeries, which under Ccmtan- the name of the Donation of Constantine com- ^naltm^ manded for seven centuries the unquestioning belief of mankind"*. Itself a portentous falsehood, it is the most unimpeachable evidence of the thoughts and beliefs of the priesthood which framed it, some time between the middle of the eighth and the middle of
> See note ', p. 34. out by -ffigidi, Der Furstenrath
™ Thifl is sulmirably brought nach dem Luneviller Friedem'
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 109
the tenth century. It tells how Constantine the Ch. vii. Great, cured of his leprosy by the prayers of Syl- vester, resolved, on the fourth day from his baptism, to forsake the ancient seat for a new capital on the Bosphorus, lest the continuance of the secular govern- ment should cramp the freedom of the spiritual, and how he bestowed therewith upon the Pope and his successors the sovereignty over Italy and the countries of the West. But this is not all, although this is what historians, in admiration of its splendid audacity, have chiefly dwelt upon. The edict proceeds to grant to the Roman pontiflf and his clergy a series of dignities and privileges, all of them enjoyed by the Emperor and his senate, all of them shewing the same desire to make the pontifical a copy of the imperial ofiice. The Pope is to inhabit the Lateran palace, to wear the diadem, the collar, the purple cloak, to carry the sceptre, and to be attended by a body of chamberlains. Similarly his clergy are to ride on white horses and receive the honours and immunities of the senate and patricians ".
° See the original forgery (or vestro patri nostro summo pon-
rather the extracts which Gratian tifici et uniyersalis urbis Bomie
giv^es from it) in the Corpus Juria papee, et omnibus eius succes-
CoTionia, dist. xcvi. 00.13,14. **Et soribus pontificibns, qui usque in
sicut nostram terrenam imperia- finem mundi in sede beati Petri
lem potentiam, sic sacrosanctam erunt sessuri, de prsesenti con-
I^manam ecclesiam decrevimus tradimus palatium imperii nostri
veneranter honorari, et amplius Lateranense, deinde diadema,
quam nostrum imperium et ter- videlicet coronam capitis nostri,
renumthronumsedem beati Petri simulque phrygium, necnon et
gloriose exaltari, tribuentes ei superhumerale, verum etiam et
potestatem et gloria? dignitatem chlamydem purpuream et tuni-
&tque vigorem et honorificentiam cam coccineam, et omnia impe-
mperialem .... Beato Syl- lialia indumenta, sed et digni-
110
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
dence of Papaqf cmd Em pi/re.
Ch. VII. The notion which prevails throughout, that the IntercU^en- chief of the religious society must be in every point conformed to his prototype the chief of the civil, is the key to all the thoughts and acts of the Roman clergy; not less plainly seen in the details of papal ceremonial than it is in the gigantic scheme of papal legislation. The Canon law^ was intended by its authors to reproduce and rival the imperial juris- prudence; a correspondence was traced between its divisions and those of the Corpus Juris Civilis, and Gregory IX, who was the first to consolidate it into a code, sought the fame and received the title of the Justinian of the Church. But the wish of the clergy was always, even in the weakness or hostility of the temporal power, to imitate, not to replace it ; since they held it the necessary complement of their own, and thought the Christian people equally imperilled by the fall of either. Hence the reluctance of Gregory II to break with the Byzantine princes**, and the
tatem imperialem prsBeidentium equitnm, conferent^ etiam et im- perialia sceptra, simulque cuncta edgna atque banda et diversa or- namenta imperialia et omnem proceasionem imperialis culminis et gloriam potestatis nostrse. . . . . . Et tdcut imperialis militia omatiir ita et derum sanctse Bo- maosB eoclesie omari decemi- mus. . . . Unde ut pontificalis apex non vilescat sed magis quam terreni imperii digDitas gloria et potentia decoretur, ecce tarn pa- latium nostrum quam Bomanam urbem et omnes Itali« seu occi- dent&Uom regionum provincias
loca et civitates beatissimo paps Sylvestro universali pape con- tradimus atque relinquimus. . . Ubi enim principatus sacerdotum et Christians religionis caput ab imperatore ccelesti constitutum est, iustum non est ut illic impera- tor terrenus habeat potestatem."
The practice of kissing the Pope's foot was adopted in imita- tion of the old imperial court. It was afterwards revived by the German Emperors.
^ DoUinger has shewn in a recent work {Die Papst Fabeh, de» MittelaUers) that the com- mon belief that Gregory II ex-
' TEE HOL T ROMAN EMPIRE. 1 1 1
maintenance of their titular sovereignty till a.d. 8oo: Ch. VII. hence the part which the Holy See played in trans- ferring the crown to Charles, the first sovereign of the West capable of fiilfilling its duties ; hence the grief with which its weakness under his successors was seen; the gladness when it descended to Otto as representative of the Franfcish kingdom.
Up to the era of a.d. 8oo there had been at Con- TheR<yman stantinople a legitimate historical prolongation of the ^^^ Roman Empire. Technically, as we have seen, the*»an«w election of Charles, after the deposition of Constan- tine VI, was itself a prolongation, and maintained the old rights and forms in their integrity. But the Pope, though he knew it not, did far more than efiect a change of dynasty when he rejected Irene and crowned the barbarian chief. Restorations are always delusive. As well we might hope to stop the earth^s course in her orbit as to arrest that ceaseless change and movement in human afiairs which forbids an old institution, suddenly transplanted into a new order of things, from filling its ancient place and serving its former ends. The dictatorship at Rome in the second Punic war was not more unlike the dictatorships of Sulla and Caasar, nor the States- general of Louis XIII to the assembly which his unhappy descendant convoked in 1789, than was the imperial office of Theodosius to that of Charles the Frank; and the seal, ascribed to a.d. 800, which
cited 1;be I'evolt against Leo the (kc. Gregorins Secnndue) ne a
Iconoclast is unfounded. nde rel amore Bomani imperii
So Anastasius^ *' Ammonebat desisterent." — Vitce Pomtif. Rom.
112
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
99
ex-
Ch. vn. bears the legend ''Eenovatio Bomani Imperii p,
presses^ more justly perhaps than was intended by its author, a second birth of the Empire.
It is not, however, from Carolingian times that a proper view of this new creation can be formed. That period was one of transition, of fluctuation and uncertainty, in which the office, passing from one dynasty and country to another % had not time to acquire a settled character and claims, and was with- out the power that would have enabled it to support them. From the coronation of Otto the Grc^t a new period begiiis, in which the ideas that have been described as floating in men's minds took clearer shape, and attached to the imperial title a body of definite rights and definite duties. It is this new phase, the Holy Empire, that we have now to consider.
Porition I The realistic philosophy, and the needs of a time
lii&M^ifL ^^'^^ ^'^ ^^Y iiotion of civil or religious order was
Emperor. T submission to authority, required the World-State to
I be a monarchy ; tradition, as well as the continuance
p Of this curious seal, a leaden one, preserved at Paris, a figure is given upon the cover of this volume. There are very few monuments of that age whose genuineness can be considered altogether beyond doubt ; but this seal has many respectable authorities in its favour. See, among others, Le Blanc, Dis- sertcUion historique sur qudques monnoiea de Charlemagne, Paris, 1689 f JM.Heineccius^DeFe^ert- bu8 Oermanorum aliarumque na- tionum Hgillis, Lips. 1 709 ; Ana-
stasius, VitcB Pontifimm Boma- norwm^ ed.Vignoli, Boms, 1753 ; Gotz, Detdschlcmds Kayser-Mun- zen des MiitdaJUerSy Dresden, 1897 ; and the authorities cited by Waitz, Deutsche Verfassung*- geschickte, iii. 179, n. 4.
4 Singularly enough, when one thinks of modem claims, the dy- nasty of France (Francia occi- dentalis) had the least share of it. Charles the Bald was the only West Frankish Emperor, and reigned a very short time.
THE EOL Y ROMAN EMPIRE. 1 13
of certain institutions^ gave the monarch the name of Gjekap. VII. .Boman Emperor. A king could not be universal sovereign, for there were many kings : the Emperor must be, for there had never been but one Emperor \ he had in older and brighter days been the actual lord of the civilised world ; the ^eat of his power was placed beside that of the spiritual autocrat of Chris- teDdom'. His functions will be seen most clearly if we deduce them from the leading principle of me- diaeval mythology, the exact correspondence of earth and heaven. As God, in the midst of the celestial hierarchy, ruled blessed spirits in paradise, so the Pope, His Vicar, raised above priests, bishops, me- tropolitans, reigned over the souls of mortal men below. But as God is Lord of earth as well as of heaven, so must he (the Imperator cosleatis ^) be repre- sented by a second earthly viceroy, the Emperor {Im- perator terrenm *), whose authority shall be of and for this present life. And as in this present world the soul cannot act save through the body, while yet the body is no more than an instrument and means for
' ** Pneterea mirari se dilecta ■ ^ "Illam (sc. Romanam eocle-
fratemitas tua quod non Fran- siam) solus ille fundavit, et super
coram Bet Bomanorum impera- petramfideimoxnafloentiserexit,
tores HOB appellemus ; set scire qui beato setem» vitse clavigero
te convenit quia nisi Romanorum terreni simul et ccBlestis imperii
imperatores essemus, utique neo iura commisit." — Corpus Juris
Francorum. A Bomanis enim Canonici, Dist. xxii. c. i. The
hoc nomen et dignitatem assump- expression is not uncommon in
simus, apud quos profecto primum mediaeval writers. So "unum
tantse culmen sublimitatis efful- est imp^um Patris et Filii et
sit," &c. — Letter of the Emperor Spiritus Sancti, cuius est pars
Levfis II to Basil the Emperor at ecclesia constituta in terris," in
Constantmople, from Chron. Sa^ Lewis II's letter. lemit.
r
1 14 THE HOL Y ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. VII. the souPs manifestation^ so must there be a rule and """ care of men^s bodies as well as of their souls, yet sub- ordinated always to the well-being of that which, is the purer and the more enduring. It is under the emblem of soul and body that the relation of the papal and imperial power is presented to us through- out the Middle Ages ". The^Pop^, as God^s vicar in matters spiritual, is to lead men to eternal hfe ; the Emperor, as vicar in matters temporal, must so con- trol them in their dealings with one another that they may be able to pursue undisturbed the spiritual life, and thereby attain the same supreme and com- mon end of everlasting happiness. In the view of this object his chief duty is to maintain peace in the world, while towards the Church his position is that of Advocate, a title borrowed from the practice adopted hy churches and monasteries of choosing some power- ful baron to protect their lands and lead their tenants in war v. The functions of Advocacy are twofold : at home to make the Christian people obedient to the priesthood, and to execute their decriees upon heretics and sinners; abroad to propagate the faith among the heathen, not sparing to use carnal weapons^.
^ "Potestas seecularis subditur rator onus sentiat patronatns,
spirituali sicut corpus animse/' — ut qui tenetur earn defendere,
St. Thomas Aquinas, i>e.Segrtmine sentire debet honorem et emo-
Prmdpum. lumen turn." — Letter of the
^ *' JSTonne Komana ecclesia four Universities, Paris, Oxford,
tenetur imperatori tanquam suo Prague, and the ' Komana gene-
patrono, et imperator ecclesiam ralitas,' to the Emperor Wenzel
lovere et defensare tanquam suus and Pope Urban, a.d. 1380.
vere patronus ? certe sic * So Leo III in a charter
Patronis vero concessum est ut issued on the day of Charles's
prselatos in ecclesiis sm patro- coronation : ** , . . actum in pns-
natus eligant. Cum ergo impe- sentia gloriosi atque excellen-
THE HOLT BOMAN EMPIRE. 115
Thus does the Emperor answer in every point to his Chajp.YII. antitype the Pope, his power being yet of a lower rank, created on the analogy of the papal, as the papal itself had been modelled after the elder Empire* The parallel holds good even in its details ; for just as we have seen the churchman assuming the crown and robes of the secular prince, so now did he array the Emperor in his own ecclesiastical vestments, the stole and the dalmatic, gave him a clerical as well as a sacred character, removed his office from all narrow- ing associations of birth or country, inaugurated him by rites, iBvery one of which was meant to symbolize and enjoin duties in their essence religious. Thus the Holy Roman Church and the Holy Roman Em- pire are one and the same thing, in two aspects ; and Catholicism, the principle of the universal Christian society, is also Romanism ; that is, rests upon Rome as the origin and type of its universality ; mani- festing itself in a mystic dualism which corresponds to the two natures of its Founder. As divine and eternal, its head is the Pope, to whom souls have been entrusted j as human and temporal, the Emperor, commissioned to rule men's bodies and acts.
tissimi filii nostri Garoli quern So, indeed, Theodulf of Or-
auctore Deo in defensionem et leans, a contemporary of Charles,
provectionem sanctse universalis ascribes to the Emperor an al-
ecclesisB hodie Augustum sacra- most papal authority over the
vimus." — Jaffi^, Regesta Ponti- Church itself: — Jlcum RoTnanoruniy ad ann. 800.
" Cceli habet hie (so. Papa) claves, proprias te iussit habere ; Tu regis ecclesie, nam regit ille poli ; Tu regis eius opes, clerum populumque g^bemas, Hie te coelicolas ducet ad usque choros."
In D, Bovquet, v. 415.
1 16 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE,
Chap. VII. In nature and compass the government of these two potentates is the same^ differing only in the sphere of its working; and it matters not whether we call the Pope a spiritual Emperor or the Emperor a secular Pope. Nor^ though the one office is below the other, as far as man^s life on earth is less precious than his life hereafter, is therefore, on the older and truer theory, the imperial authority delegated by the
Harmon'^ papal. For, as has been said already, God is repre- Irit al s®^*^^ ^y ^^® Pope not in every capacity, but only as
and tern- the ruler of spirits in heaven : as sovereign of earth,
powers, -^^ issues His commission directly to the Emperor. Opposition between two servants of the same King is inconceivable, each being bound to aid and foster the other : the co-operation of both being needed in all that concerns the welfare of Christendom at large.
Ohwrchand This is the one perfect and self-consistent scheme of tau, ^Y^^ union of Church and State ; for, taking the ab- solute coincidence of their limits to be self-evident, it assumes the infallibility of their joint govern- ment, and derives, as a corollary from that infalli- bility, the duty of the civil magistrate to root out heresy and schism no less than to punish treason and rebellion. It is also the scheme which, granting the possibility of their harmonious action, places the two powers in that relation which gives each of them its maximum of strength. But by a law, to which it would be hard to find exceptions, in proportion as the State became more Christian, the Church, who to work out her purposes had assumed worldly forms, became by the contact worldlier, meaner, spiritually
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE, 1 17
i^reaker; and the system which Constantine founded Chap. VII. amid such rejoicings, which culminated so triumph- antly in the Empire Church of the Middle Ages, has in each succeeding generation heen slowly losing ground, haa seen its brightness dimmed and its com- pleteness marred, and sees now those who are most zealous on behalf of its surviving institutions feebly defend or silently desert the principle upon which all must rest.
The complete accord of the papal and imperial powers which this theory, as sublime as it is im- practicable, requires, was attained only at a few points in their history xT It was finally supplanted by another view of their relation, which, professing to be a development of a principle recognized as j fundamental, the superior importance of the religious life, found increasing favour in the eyes of fervent churchmen^. Declaring the Pope sole representative j on earth of the Deity, it concluded that from him, j and not directly from God, must the Empire be held ) -—held feudally, it was said by many — and it thereby, thrust down the t'Cmporal power, to be the slavef
^erhaps at no more than each in what has been entrusted
Ithree : in the time of Charles to Mm : the Pope in what con-
fand Leo ; again under Otto III cems the soul ; the Emperor in
and his two Popes, Gregory V all that belongs to the body and
and Sylvester II ; thirdly, under to knighthood." The Schwaben-
Henry III ; certainly never iptegd, compiled half a century
thenceforth. later, subordinates the prince
* The Sachsen^spiegd (^eculim, to the pontiff : '' Daz weltliche
Saxonicum, circ. ad. i3-(o), the Schwert des Grerichtes daz lihet
great JSTorth-Grerman law book, der Babest dem Chaiser ; daz
says, '' The Empire is held from geistlich ist dem Babest gesetzt
Grod alone, not from the Pope, daz er damitrichte.*'
Emperor and Pope are supreme
118
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. Vlli instead of the sister of the spiritual ». Nevertheless, ' the Papacy in her meridian, and under the guidance of her greatest minds, of Hildebrand, of Alexander, of Innocent, not seeking to abolish or absorb the civil government, required only its obedience, and exalted its dignity against all save herself^. It was reserved for Boniface VIII, whose extravagant pre- tensions betrayed the decay that was already at work within, to show himself to the crowding pilgrims at the jubilee of a.d. 1300, seated on the throne of Con- stantine, arrayed with sword, and crown, and sceptre, shouting aloud, '^ I am CsBsar — I am Emperor/' Proofs I The theory of an Emperor's place and functions dkevaldol ^^"® sketched cannot be definitely assigned to any cuments. I point of time ; for it was growing and changing from \ the sixth century to the fifteenth. Nor need it sur- prise us that we do not find in any one author a statement of the grounds whereon it rested, since much of what seems strangest to us was then too obvious to be formally explained. No one, however, who examines mediaeval writings can fail to perceive, sometimes from direct words, oftener from allusions or assumptions, that such ideas as these are present to the minds of their authors c. That which it is
• So Boniface VIII in the buU Unam Sanctam, will have but one head for the Christian people. " Igiiur ecclesise unius et unicee tinum corpus, unum caput, non duo capita quasi monstrum."
^ 'St. Bernard writes to Con- rad III : ''Non veniat anima mea in consilium eorum qui di- cunt vel imperio pacem et liber-
tatem ecclesise vel ecclesise pro- speritatem et exaltationem im- perii nocituram." So in the De Consideratione : "Si utrumque simul habere yehs, perdes utrum- que," of the papal claim to tem- poral and spiritual authority, quoted by Gieseler.
^ See especially Peter de Andlo (Be ^. ;-.--•" 7>^^rr^r\ ■ -Rilph
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
119
easiest to prove is the connexion of the Empire with Chap. Vll. religion. From every record, from chronicles and treatises, proclamations, laws, and sermons, passages may be adduced wherein the defence and spread of the faith, and the maintenance of concord among the Christian people, is represented as the function to which the Empire has been set apart. The belief expressed by Lewis II, ^^ Imperii dignitas non in vocabuli voce sed in gloriosse pietatis culmine con- sistitV^ appears again in the address of the Arch- bishop of Mentz to Conrad II «, as Vicar 6f God; is reiterated by Frederick I', when he writes to the prelates of Germany, ^' On earth God has placed no more than two powers, and as there is in heaven but one God, so is there here one Pope and one Emperor. Divine providence has specially appointed the Roman Empire to prevent the continuance of schism in the Church ff /^ is echoed by jurists and divines down to the days of Charles V^. It was a doctrine which we
Golonna (De trcmslatione Imperii Romcmi) : Dante {J)e Monarchid) ; Engelbert (Dt Ortu et Fine Im- perii BoTnani) ; Marsilius Pata- vinus (De translatione Imperii Homani) ; -^neas Sylvius Picco- lomini {I)e Ortu et Avikoritate Imperii Bomani) ; Zoannetus {De Imperio Romano cUque ejus luris- dicti(me) ; and the writers in Schardius's Sylloge, and in Gol- dast's Collection of Tracts, en- titled Monarchia Imperii.
* Letter of Lewis II to Basil the Macedonian, in Chron. SaJer- nit. in Mur. B.I.S.; ala'o given by Baronius, Ann. Eccl. ad an n. 87 1.
« "Ad summum dignitatis per- venisti : Vicarius es Dei." — Wip- pp, quoted by Pfeffinger, Vitri- arius lUustratus,
' Letter in Kadewic, ap. Mu- ratori, Rerwm Italicarum Scrip- tores.
8 Lewis IV is styled in one of his proclamations, *'Gentis hu- manae, orbis Christiani custos, urbi et orbi a Deo electus prse- esse. " — Pf eflSnger.
^ In a document issued by the Diet of Speyer (a.d. 1529) the Emperor is called " Oberst, Vogt, und Haupt der Christenheit." Hieronymus Balbus, writing
120
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. VII. shall find the friends and foes of the Holy See equally Concerned to insist on, the one to make the trans- ference [translatio) from the Greeks to the Ghermans appear entirely the Pope^s work, and so establish his right of overseeing or cancelling his rivaFs election, the others by setting the Emperor at the head of the Church to reduce the Pope to the place of chief bishop of his realm K His headship was dwelt upon chiefly in the two duties already noticed. As the counter- part of the Mussulman Commander of the Faithful, he was leader of the Church militant against her infidel foes, was in this capacity summoned to con- duct crusades, and in later times recognized chief of the confederacies against the conquering Ottomans. As representative of the whole Christian people, it belonged to him to convoke General Councils^, a right not without importance even when exercised concurrently with the Pope, but far more weighty when the object of the council was to settle a dis- puted election, or, as at Constance, to depose the reigning pontiff himself.
No better illustrations can be desired than those to
about the same time, puts the question whether all Christians are subject to the Emperor in temporal things, as they are to the Pope in spiritual, and an- swers it by saying, '* Cum am bo ex eodem fonte perfluzerint et eadem semita incedant, de utro- que idem puto sentiendum."
* '* Non magis ad Papam de- positio seu remotio pertinet quam ad quoslibet regum prselatos^ qui
reges suos prout assolent, conse- crant et inungunt." — Letter of Frederick II (Kb. i. c. 3).
I' It is to this imperial func- tion that reference is made. in the twenty- first Article of the Anglican Church : " Greneral douucils may not be gathered together without the command- ment and will of Princes," (i.e. Principum Romanorum).
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 121
be found in the Office for the Imperial Coronation Chap. VII. at Bome^ too long to be transcribed here, but well Tke Coro-
worthy of an attentive study ^ The rites prescribed **^**?^ ^^^" . . . . monies.
in it are rites of consecration to a religious office :
the Emperor, besides the sword, globe, and sceptre
of temporal power, receives a ring as the symbol of
bis &ith, is ordained a subdeacon, assists the Pope in
celebrating mass, partakes as a clerical person of the
conimunion in both kinds, is admitted a canon of
St. Peter and St. John Lateran. The oath to be
taken by an elector begins, '^Ego N. volo regem
Ilomanorum in Csesarem promovendum, temporale
caput populo Christiano eligere/^ The Emperor
swears to cherish and defend the Holy Roman
Church and her bishop: the Pope prays after the
reading of the gospel, ^^Deus qui ad praedicandum
setemi regni evangelium Imperium Bomanum prsB-
parasti, praetende famulo tuo Imperatori nostro arma
ocelestia/' Among the Emperor^s official titles there
occur these : ^^ Head of Christendom,^^ ^^ Defender
and Advocate of the Christian Church,^' ^^ Temporal
Head of the Faithful,'' '^ Protector of Palestine and
of the Catholic Faith «'/'
Very singular are the reasonings used by which The rights the necessity and divine right of the Empire are ^/^ ^^^^ proved out of the Bible. The mediaeval theory o{ from the the relation of the civil power to the priestly was
1 Liber Ceremonialis Romarms, AntiquUaies Italia Medii ^vi. lib. i. sect. 5 ; with which com- "* See Goldast, Collection of pare the Coronatio Romana of Imperial Constitutions ; and Mo- Henry VII, in Pertz, and Mura- ser, Romische Eayser, tori's Dissertation in vol. i. of the
.<
122 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE,
Chap. VII. profoundly influenced by the account in the Old Testament of the Jewish theocracy, in which the king, though the institution of his office was a de- rogation from the purity of the older system, appears divinely chosen and commissioned, and stood in a peculiarly intimate relation to the national religion. From the New Testament the authority and eternity of Bome herself was established. Every passage was seized on where submission to the powers that be is enjoined, every instance cited where obedience had actually been rendei'ed to imperial officials, a special emphasis being laid on the sanction which Christ Himself had given to Roman dominion by pacifying the world through Augustus, by being bom at the time of the taxing, by paying tribute to Caesar, by saying to Pilate, ^^ Thou couldest have no power at all against Me except it were given thee from above/'
More attractive to the mystical spirit than these direct arguments were those drawn from prophecy, or based on the allegorical interpretation of Scripture. Very early in Christian history had the belief formed itself that the Roman Empire — as the fourth beast of DanieFs vision, as the iron legs and feet of Nebu- chadnezzar's image — ^was to be the world's last and universal kingdom. From Origen and Jerome down- wards it found unquestioned acceptance", and that
n The abbot Engelbert (De ii., how the falling away will Ortu et Fine Imperii Romani) precede the coming of Anti- quotes Origen and Jerome to christ. There will be a triple this effect, and proceeds him- "discessio," of the kingdoms of self to explain, from 2 Thess. the earth from the Boman Em-
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE, 123
not tinnaturally. For no new power had arisen to Chap. VII. extinguish the Roman^ as the Persian monarchy had been hlotted out by Alexander, as the realms of his successors had fallen before the conquering republic herself. Every Northern conqueror, Goth, Lombard, Anglo-Saxon, had cherished her memory and pre- served her laws; Germany had adopted even the name of the Empire '^dreadful and terrible and strong exceedingly, and diverse from all that were before it" To these predictions, and to many others from the Apocalypse, were added those which in the Gospels and Epistles foretold the advent of Anti- christ °. He was to succeed the Roman dominion, and the Popes are more than once warned that by weakening the Empire they are hastening the coming of the enemy and the end of the worlds. It is not
pire, of the Church from the abbot of Moutier-en-Der, com- Apostolic See, of the faithful piled (cir. 950) for the informa* from the faith. Of these, the tion of Queen Gerberga, wife ^ first causes the second ; the tern- of Louis d'Outremer. Antichrist poral sword to punish heretics is to be bom a Jew of the and schismatics being no longer tribe of Dan (Gen. xlix. 1 7), " non ready to work the will of the de episcopo et monacha, sicut rulers of the Church. alii delirando dogmatizant, sed o A fuU statement of the views de immundissima meretrice et that prevailed in the earlier crudelissimo nebulone. Totus in Middle Age regarding Anti- peccato concipietur, in peccato Christ — as well as of the singular generabitur, in peccato basce- prophecy of the Frankiah Em- tur." His birthplace is Ba- peror who shall appear in the bylon : he is to be brought up latter days, conquer the worlds in Bethsaida and Chorazin. and then going to Jerusalem Adso's book may be found shall lay down his crown on the printed in Migne, t. ci. p. 1290. Mount of Olives and deliver p S. Thomas explains the pro- over the kingdom to Christ — phecy in a remarkable manner, may be found in the little shewing how the decline of the treatise, Vita Antichristi, which Empire is no argument against AdsOy monk and afterwards its ^Ifilment. ** Bicendum quod
124 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. VII. only when groping in the dark labyrinths of pro- phecy that mediaeval authors are quick in detecting emblems^ imaginative in explaining them. Men were wont in those days to interpret Scripture in a singular fashion. Not only did it not occur to them to ask what meaning words had to those to whom they were originally addressed; they were quite as careless whether the sense they discovered was one which the language used would naturally and rationally bear to any reader at any time. No analogy was too faint, no allegory too fanciful, to be drawn out pf a simple text; and, once propounded, the interpretation acquired in argument all the authority of the text itself. Thus the two swords of which Christ said, ^^ It is enough,^^ became the spiritual and temporal powers, and the grant of the spiritual to Peter involves the supremacy of the Papacy <i. Thus one writer proves the eternity of Rome from the seventy-second Psalm, ^'They shall fear thee as long as the sun and moon endure, throughout all generations;^^ the moon being of course, since Gregory VII, the Roman Empire, as the sun, or greater light, is. the Popedom. Another
nondum cessavit, sed est com- adventus Antichristi est discessio
mutatum de temporal! in spiri- ab eo." — Comment, ad 2 Tkess. ii.
tuale, ut dicit Leo Papa in ser- 1 See note z, page 1 1 7. The
mone de Apostolis : et ideo dis- Papal party sometimes insisted
cessio a Bomano imperio debet that both swords were given
intelligi non solum a temporal! to Peter, while the imperialists
sed etiam a spirituali, scilicet a assigned the temporal sword
fide Catholica Romanae Ecclesise. to John. Thus a gloss to the
Est autem hoc conveniens sig- Sachsenspiegd says, ** Dat eine
num nam Christus venit. quando svert hadde Sinte Peter, dat het
Romanum imperium omnibus do- nu de paves : dat andere hadde
minabatur : ita e contra signum Johannes, dat het nu de keyser."
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 125
quoting, ^^Qui tenet teneat donee auferaturr/^ with Chap. Vll. Aug'ustine^s explanation thereof ^ says, that when ^^he who letteth^^ is removed, tribes and provinces will rise in rebellion, and the Empire to which God has committed the government of the human race will be dissolved. From the miseries of his own time (he wrote under Frederick III) he predicts that the end is near. The same spirit of symbolism seized on the number of the electors: '^the seven lamps burning in the unity of the sevenfold spirit which illumine the Jloly Empire ^J' Strange legends told how Romans and Germans were of one lineage ; how Peter^s staff had been found on the banks of the Rhine, the miracle signifying that a commission was issued to the Germans to reclaim wandering sheep to the one fold. So complete does the scrip- tural proof appear in the hands of mediaeval church- men^ many holding it a mortal sin to resist the power ordained of God, that we forget they were all the while only adapting to an existing institu- tion what they found written already; we begin to fancy that the Empire was maintained, obeyed, exalted for centuries, on the strength of words to which we attach iu almost every case a wholly diflferent meaning.
It would be a task both pleasant and profitable to
' 2 Thess. ii. 7. not to commit himself positively
• St.Augustine,however,tliough to it. be states the view (applying the * Jordoinis Chronica (written
passage to the Boman Empire) towards the close of the thir-
which was generally received teenth centnry). in the Middle Ages, is careful
126 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. VII. P^^s on from the theologians to the poets and artists Ulustrar ^^ ^^® Middle Ages, and endeavour to trace through tionsfrom their works the influence of the ideas which have been ^j.f expounded above. But it is one far too wide for the
scope of the present treatise ; and one which would demand an acquaintance with those works them- selves such as only minute and long-continued study- could give. For even a slight knowledge enables any one to see how much still remains to be inter- preted in the imaginative literature and in the paint- ings of those times, and how apt we are in glancing over a piece of work to miss those seemingly trifling indications of the artistes thought or belief which are all the more precious that they are indirect or uncon- scious. Therefore a history of mediaeval art which shall evolve its philosophy from its concrete forms, if it is to have any value at all, must be minute in description as well as subtle in method. But lest this class of illustrations should appear to have been wholly forgotten, it may be well to mention here two paintings in which the theory of the mediaeval empire is unmistakeably set forth. One of them is in Rome, the other in Florence ; every traveller in Italy may examine both for himself. Mosaic of The first of these is the famous mosaic of the PaU^e at^ Lateran triclinium, constructed by Pope Leo III Bx>rM,, abotit A. D, 800, and an exact copy of which, made by the order of Sixtus V, may still be seen over against the fa9ade of St. John Lateran. Originally meant to adorn the state banqueting- hall of the Popes, it is now placed in the open
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 127
air, in the finest situation in Rome, looking from Chap. VII. the "brow of a hill across the green ridges of the Campagna to the olive-groves of Tivoli and the glistenDg crags and snow-capped summits of the Umbrian and Sabine Apennine. It represents in the centre Christ surrounded by the Apostles, whom He is sending forth to preach the Gospel; one hand is extended to bless, the other holds a book with the words '^Pax Vobis/^ Below and to the right Christ is depicted again, and this time sit- ting: on his right hand kneels Pope Sylvester, on his left the Emperor Constantine; to the one he gives the keys of heaven and hell, to the other a banner surmounted by a cross. In the group on the opposite, that is, on the left side of the arch, we see the Apostle Peter seated, before whom in like manner kneel Pope Leo III and Charles the Em- peror; the latter wearing, like Constantine, his crown. Peter, himself grasping the keys, gives to Leo the paUium of an archbishop, to Charles the banner of the Christian army. The inscription is, '^Beatus Petrus dona vitam Leoni PP et bictoriam Carulo regi dona;^^ while round the arch is written, ^^ Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in terra pax omnibus bonse vo- luntatis.^'
The order and nature of the ideas here symbo- lized is sufficiently clear. First comes the reve- lation of the Gospel, and the divine commission to gather all men into its fold. Next the institu- tion, at the memorable era of Constantine's con- version, of the two powers by which the Christian
128 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. VII. people is to be respectively taught and governed. Thirdly we are shewn the permanent Vicar of God, the Apostle who keeps the keys of heaven and hell, re-establishing these same powers on a new and firmer basis*. The badge of ecclesiastical supremacy he gives to Leo as the spiritual head of the faith- ful on earthy the banner of the Church Militant to Charles, who is to maintain her cause against heretics and infidels. Fresco in The second painting is of greatly later date. It Nwdlaat ^ ^ fresco in the chapter-house of the Dominican Florence, convent of Santa Maria Novella 'i at Florence, usually known as the Capellone degli Spagnuoli. It has been commonly ascribed, on Vasari's autho- rity, to Simone Martini of Siena, but an examina- tion of the dates of his life seems to discredit this view^. Most probably it was executed between
^ Compare with this the words te ;' quia ecce dovus Christianis-
which Pope Hadrian I bad used simus Dei Constantinus imperator
some twenty - three years before, of his temporibus surrexit, per quern
Charles as representative of Con- omnia Deus sanctae suae ecclesi»
stantine : " Et sieut temporibus beati apostolorum prindpis Petri.
Beati Sylvestri, Homani ponti- largiri dignatus est." — Letter
ficis, a sanctse recordationis piis- XLIX of Cod. Carol., A.D. 777
simo Constantino magno impera- (in 'h&.ya. Scriptores Bervm Italir
tore, per eius largitatem sancta carum).
Dei catholica et apostolica Bo- This lett^ is memorable as
mana. ecclesia elevata atque ex- containing the first allusion^ or
altata est, et potestatem in his what seems an allusion, to Con-
Hesperise partibus largiri digna- stantine's Donation, tus est, ita et in his vestris fell- The phrase " sancta Dei ec-
cissimis temporibus atque nostris, clesia, id est, B. Petri apostoli,"
sancta Dei ecclesia, id est, beati is worth noting. Petri apostoli germinet atque ex- " The church in which the
sultet, ut omnes gentes quae haec opening scene of Boccaccio's De-
audierint edicere valeant, * Do- cameron is laid, mine salvumfacregem, etexau ii ^ So Kugler (Eastlake's ed.
nos in die in qua iuvocaFciimus vol. i. p. 144), and so aUo Messrs.
THE HOLT r4mAN EMPIRE. 129
A.D. 1340 and 1350. It is a huge work, covering Ch. VIL one whole wall of the chapter-house, and filled with figures, some of which, but seemingly on no sufiicient authority, have been taken to represent eminent persons of the time -^ Cimabue, Amolfo, Boccaccio, Petrarch, Laura, and others. In it is represented the whole scheme of man^s life here and hereafter — ^the Church on earth and the Church in heaven. Full in front are seated side by side the Pope and the Emperor : on their right and left, in a descending row, minor spiritual and temporal ofilcials; next to the Pope a cardinal, bishops, and doctors ; next to the Emperor, the king of France and a line of nobles and knights. Behind them appears the Duomo of Florence as an emblem of the Visible Church, while at their feet is a fiock of sheep (the faithful) attacked by ravening wolves (heretics and schismatics), whom a pack of spotted dogs (the Do- minicans *) combat and chase away. From this, the central foreground of the picture, a path winds round and up a height to a great gate where the Apostle sits on guard to admit true believers : they passing through it are met by choirs of seraphs, who lead them on through the delicious groves of Paradise. Above all, at the top of the painting a^d just over the spot where his two lieutenants, Pope and Em- peror, are placed below, is the Saviour enthroned amid saints and angels x.
Crowe and Cavalcaselle, in their canse of their black-and-white
New History of Painting in Italy, raiment.
vol. ii. pp. 85 aqq. y There is of course a great
* Domini canes. Spotted be- deal more detail in the picture,
K
130 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Oh. VII. / Here, too, there needs no comment. The Church Anti-nor /Militant is the perfect counterpatrt of the Church ttcmaZ cfw,' Triumphant : her chief daneer is from those who
raeter of ^ ^ ^
^^iS'wipire. Would rend the unity of her visible body, the seam- less garment of her heavenly Lord ; and that de- totion to His person which is the sum of her faith /and the essence of her being, must on earth be (rendered to those two lieutenants whom He has \chosen to govern in His name.
A theory such as that which it has been attempted to explain and illustrate, is utterly opposed to restric- j tions of place or person. The idea of one Christian I people, all whose members are equal in the sight of God, — an idea so forcibly expressed in the unity of the priesthood, where no barrier separated the successor of the Apostle from the humblest curate, — and in the prevalence of one language for worship and government, made the post of Emperor inde- pendent of the race, or rank, or actual resources of its occupant. The Emperor was entitled to the obedience of Christendom, not as hereditary chief of a victorious tribe, or feudal lord of a portion of the earth^s surface, but as solemnly invested with an office. Not only did he excel in dignity the kings of the earth: his power was different in its nature; and, so far from supplanting or rivalling
which I have not thought it ne- inferior to him while superior to
cessary to describe. St. Dominic every one else, holds in his hand,
is a conspicnous figure. instead of the usual imperial
It is worth remarking that the globe, a death's head, typifying
Emperor, who is on the Pope's the transitory nature of his
left hand, and so made slightly power.
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 131
theirs, rose above them to become the source and Ch. VII. needful condition of their authority in their several territories, the bond which joined them in one har- monious body. The vast dominions and vigorous personal action of Charles the Great had concealed this distinction while he reigned ; under his suc- cessors the imperial crown appeared disconnected from the direct government of the kingdoms they had established, existing only in the form of an undefined suzerainty, as the type of that unity without which men^s minds could not rest. It ?^ was characteristic of the Middle Ages, that demand- \ ing the existence of an Emperor, they were careless \ who he was or how he was chosen, so he had been ; duly inaugurated; and that they were not shocked \ by the contrast between unbounded rights and actual helplessness. At no time in the world^s history has theory, pretending all the while to control practice, been so utterly divorced from it. Ferocious and sen- sual, that age worshipped humility and asceticism : there has never been a purer ideal of love, nor a )
grosser profligacy of life.
The power of the Roman Emperor cannot as yet be called international ; though this, as we shall see, became in later times its most important aspect ; for in the tenth century national distinctions had scarcely begun to exist. But its genius was clerical and old Romian, in nowise territorial or Teutonic : it rested not on armed hosts or wide lands, but upon the duty, l^' the awe, the love of its subjects.
is.%
CHAPTER VIIL
THE EOMAN EMPIRE AND THE GEEMAN KINGDOM.
CH.VIII. This was the office which Otto the Great assumed Union of ^^ ^'^' 9^^» But it was not his only office. He ^iZoTwaTi xv'as already a German king; and the new dignity with the jhy no means superseded the old. This union in one h^!al^ /person of two characters, a union at first personal. / then official, and which became at last a fusion of I the two into something different from either, is the I key to the whole subsequent history of Germany and \ the Empire. Qermany Of the German kingdom little need be said, since mma/rchy. ^^ differs in no essential respect from the other king- doms of Western Europe as they stood in the tenth century. The five or six great tribes or tribe-leagues which composed the German nation had been first brought together under the sceptre of the Carolin- g^ans; and, though still retaining marks of their independent origin, were prevented from separating by community of speech and a common pride in the great Frankish Empire. When the line of Charles the Great ended in a.d. 911, by the death of Lewis the Child (son of Arnulf ), Conrad, duke of the Fran- conians, and after him Henry (the Fowler), duke of
i
1
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE, 133
the Saxons, was chosen to fill the vacant throne. By Ch. VIIL his vigorous yet conciliatory action^ his upright character, his courage and good foHune in tepelling the Hungarians, Henry laid deep the foutidations of royal power : under his more famous son it rose into a stable edifice. Otto's coronation feast at Aachen, where the great nobles of the realm did him menial service, where Franks, Bavarians, Sua- bians, Thuringians, and Lorrainers gathered round * the Saxon monarch, is the inauguration of a true Teutonic realm; which, though it called itself not Grerman but East Frankish, and claimed to be the lawful representative of the Carolingian monarchy, had a constitution and a tendency wholly different.
There had been under those princes a singpilar jPci^iaZMm. mixture of the old German organization by tribes or districts (the so-called Gauverfassung), such as we find in the earliest records, with the method introduced by Charles, of maintaining by means of officials, some fixed, others moving frosa . place to place, the control of the central government. In the suspension of that government which followed, there grew up a system whose seeds had been sown as far back as the days of Clovis, a system whose essence was the combination of the tenure of land by military service with a peculiar personal relation between the landlord and his tenant^ whereby the one was bound to render fatherly protection, the other aid and obedience. This is not the place for tracing the origin of feudality on Roman soil, nor for shewing how, by a sort of contagion, it spread
134 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Oh. VIII. into Germany, how it struck firm root in the period of comparative quiet imder Pipin and Charles, how from the hands of the latter it took its idtimate form, how the weakness of his successors allowed it to triumph everywhere. Still lefis would it be possible here to examine its social and moral in- fluence. Politically it might be defined as the system which made the owner of a piece of land, whether large or small, the sovereign of those who dwelt thereon: an annexation of personal to terri- torial authority more familiar to Eastern despotism than to the free races of primitive Europe. On this principle were founded, and by it are explained, feudal law and justice, feudal finance, feudal legislation, each tenant holding towards his lord the position which his own tenants held towards himself. And it is just because the relation was so uniform, the principle so comprehensive, the ruling class so firmly bound to its support, that feudalism has been able to lay upon society that grasp which the struggles of more than twenty generations have scarcely shaken off. The feudal^ Now by the middle of the tenth century, Ger- ic^ng. I jnany, less fully committed than France to feu- j dalism^s worst feature, the hopeless bondage of the V peasantry, was otherwise thoroughly feudalized. As for that equality of all the freeborn save the sacred line, which we find in the Germany of Tacitus, there had been substituted a gradation of ranks, and a concentration of power in the hands of a landholding caste ; so had the monarch lost his ancient character
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 135
as leader and judge of the people, to become the Ch.VIII. head of a tyrannical oligarchy. He was titular lord of the soil, could exact from his vassals service and aid in arms and money, could dispose of vacant fiefs, could at pleasure declare war or make peace. But all these rights he exercised far less as sovereign of the nation than as standing in a peculiar relation to the feudal tenants, a relation in its origin strictly personal, and whose prominence obscured the political duties of prince and subject. And great as these rights might become in the hands of an ambitious and politic ruler, they were in practice limited by the corresponding duties he owed to his vassals, and by the difficulty of enforcing them against a power- ful offender. The king was not permitted to retain in his own hands escheated fiefs, must even grant away those he had held before coming to the throne ,- he could not interfere with th^ jurisdiction of his tenants in their own lands, nor prevent them from waging war or forming leagues with each other like independent princes. Chief among the nobles stood TU no- the dukes, who, although their authority was now delegated, theoretically at least instead of indepen- dent, territorial instead of personal, retained never- theless much of thjit hold on the exclusive loyalty of their subjects which had belonged to them as hereditary leaders of the tribe under the ancient system. They were, with the three Rhenish arch- bishops, by far the greatest subjects, often aspiring to the crown, sometimes not unable to resist its wearer. The constant encroachments which Otto
136
TES HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
CH.VIII. made upon their privileges, especially through the institution of the Counts Palatine, destroyed their ascendancy, hut not their importance. It was not till the thirteenth century that they disappeared with the rise of the second order of nobility* That order, at this period far less powerful^ included the counts, margraves or marquises and landgraves^ ori- ginally officers of the crown, now feudal tenants; holding their lands of the dukes, and maintaining against them the same contest which they in turn waged with the crown. Below these came the barons and simple knights, then the diminishing class of freemen, the increasing one of serfs. The in- stitutions of primitive Germany were almost all gone ; supplanted by a new system, partly the natural result of the formation of a settled from a half- nomad society, partly imitated from that which had arisen upon Roman soU, west of the Rhine and south of the Alps. The army was no longer the Heerban of the whole nation, which had been wont to follow the king on foot in distant expeditions, but a cavalry militia of barons and their retainers, bound to ser- vice for a short period, and rendering it unwil- lingly where their own interest was not concerned. The frequent popular assemblies^ whereof under the names of the Mallum, the Placitum, the Mayfield, we hear so much under Clovis and Charles, were now never summoned, and the laws that had been pro- mulgated there were, if not abrogated, practically obsolete. No national council existed, save the Diet in which the higher nobility, lay and clerical, met
TheOer-
manic
feudal
polity
generally.
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 137
their sovereign, sometimes to decide Oft foreign war, Ch. VIII. oftener to concur in the grant of a fief or the pro- scription of a rebel. Every district had its own rude local customs administered by the court of the local lord : other law there was none : for imperial juris- prudence had in these lately civilized countries not yet filled the place left empty by the disuse of the barbarian codes.
This condition of things was indeed better than that utter confusion which had gone before, for a principle of order had begun to group and bind the tossing atoms j and though the union into which it drove men was a hard and narrow one, it was some- thing that they should have learnt to unite them- selves at all. Yet nascent feudality was but one remove from anarchy ; and the tendency to isolation and diversity continued, despite the efforts of the Church and the Carolingian princes, to be all-power- ful in Western Europe. The German kingdom was 1 already a bond between the German races, and ap- pears strong and united when we compare it with the Prance of Hugh Capet, or the England of Ethelred II; yet its history to the twelfth century is little else than a record of disorders, revolts, civil wars, of a ceaseless struggle on the part of the monarch to enforce his feudal rights, a resistance by his vassals equally obsti-^ nate and more successful. What the issue of the con- test might have been if Germany had been left to take her own course is matter of speculation, though the example of every European state except England and Norway may incline the balance in favour of the
Empire and the Crerman kingdom.
138 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. VIII J crown. But the. strife had scarcely begun when a TheRwnm ^^^ influence was interposed : the German king be- came Roman Emperor. No two systems can be more unlike than those whose headship became thus vested in one person : the one centralized^ the other local ; the one resting on a sublime theory^ the other the rude offspring of anarchy; the one gathering all power into the hands of an Irresponsible monarchy the other limiting his rights and authorizing re- sistance to his commands; the one demanding the equaUiy of all citizens as creatures equal before I Heaven^ the other bound up with an aristocracy the / proudest^ and in its gradations of rank the most \ exacts that Europe had ever seen. Characters so repugnant could not, it might be thought, meet in one person, or if they met must strive till one swal- lowed up the other. It was not so. In the fusion which began from the first, though it was for a t, time imperceptible, each of the two characters gave v' and each lost some of its attributes : the king became ^ more than German, the Emperor less than Roman, ^^ till, at the end of six centuries, the monarch in whom 5* two ^ persons ^ had been united, appeared as a third
^ different from either of the former, and might not
inappropriately be entitled '^ German Emperor ^/' The nature and progress of this change will appear in the after history of Germany, and cannot be de- scribed here without in some measure anticipating
* Although this was of course semper Augustus ;" " Komischer never his legal title. Till 1806 Kaiser." he was " Bomauorum Imperator
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 139
subsequent events. A word or two may indicate Ch.vIII. how the process of fusion began.
It was natural that the great mass of Otto^s sub- jects^ to whom the imperial title> dimly associated with Rome and the Pope^ sounded grander than the regal^ without being known as otherwise diflferent, should in thought and speech confound them. The sovereign and his ecclesiastical advisers^ with &r clearer views of the new office and of the mutual relation of the two^ found it impossible to separate them in practice^ and were glad to merge the lesser in the greater. For. as lord of the world, Otto was Emperor north as well as south of the Alps. When RmiUs of he issued an edict, he claimed the obedience of his 2*1!?!^
' ^ ^ %n one per-
Teutonic subjects in both capacities ; when as Em- son. peror he led the armies of the gospel against the heathen, it was the standard of their feudal superior that his armed vassals followed; when he founded churches and appointed bishops, he acted partly as suzerain of feudal lands, partly as protector of the , faith, charged to guide the Church in matters tem- poral. Thus the assumption of the imperial crown brought to Otto as its first result an apparent in- crease of domestic peace; it made his position by its historical associations more dignified, by its re- ligious more hallowed; it raised him higher above his vassals and above other sovereigns; it enlarged his prerogative in ecclesiastical afiairs, and by neces- sary consequence gave to ecclesiastics a more im- portant place at court and in the administration of government than they had enjoyed before. Great
140 THE HOLY ROMAUT E:.-- ^ '-.,
Ch. vni. as was the power of the bishops and abbots in all the feudal kingdoms, it stood nowhere so high as in Germany. There the Emperor's double position, as head both of Church and State, required the two organizations to be exactly parallel. In the eleventh century a full half of the land and wealth of the country, and no small part of its military strength, was in the hands of Churchmen : their influence pre- dominated in the Diet : the archchancellorship of the Empire, highest of all offices, belonged of right to the archbishop of Mentz, as primate of Germany. It was by Otto, who in resuming the attitude must repeat the policy of Charles, that the greatness of the clergy was thus advanced. He is commonly said to have wished to weaken the aristocracy by raising up rivals to them in the hierarchy. It may have been so, and the measure was at any rate a disastrous one, for the clergy soon approved themselves not less rebellious than those whom they were to restrain. But in accusing Otto's judgment, historians have often forgotten in what position he stood to the Church, and how it behoved him, according to the doctrine received, to establish in her an order like in all things to that which he found already sub- sisting in the State. Changes i«i The style which Otto adopted shewed his desire title, I ^i^^g ^^ merge the king in the Emperor^. Charles had called himself '^Imperator Caesar Carolus rex Francorum invictissimus /' and again, " Carolus sere-
*> Piitter, Dissertaiiones de Instawratione Imperii Ramwni ; cf. Goldast's Collection of Constitintions ; and Fertz, M, 0. M,
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 141
nissimus Augustus, Pius, Felix, Romanorunx guber- Ch. VIII. nans Imperium, qui et per misericordiam Dei rex Prancorum atque Langobardorum/^ Otto and Lis first successors, who until their coronation at Home had used the titles of '^ Rex Francorum,'' or '^ Rex Prancorum Orientalium,^^ or oftener still '^ Rex '* alone, discarded after it all titles save the highest of " Imperator Augustus /^ seeming thereby, though they too had been crowned at Aachen and Milan, to claim the authority of Caesar through all their dominions. Tracing as we are the history of a title, it is needless to dwell on the significance of the change c. » Charles, son of the Ripuarian allies of Probus, had been a Prankish chieftain on the Rhine; Otto the Saxon, successor of the Cheruscan Arminius, would rule his native Elbe with a power borrowed from the Tiber.
Not, however, in every respect did the imperial IwpmVrf element predominate over the royal. The monarch £^^^**'
'V
might desire to make good against his turbulent ( \ barons the boundless prerogative which he acquired with his new crown, but he lacked the power to do so; and they, disputing neither the supremacy of that crown nor his right to wear it, refused with good reason to let their own freedom be infringed upon by an act of which they had not been the authors. So far was Otto from embarking on so
^ Putter (2>e Instauratione that if Otto had but coatinued
Imperii Romani) will have it that to style himself ** Francorum
upon this mistake, as he calls it, Bex/' Grermany would have been
of Otto's, the whole subsequent spared all her Italian wars, history of the Empire turned ;
142 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch.VIII. vain an enterprise, that his rule was even more direct and more personal than that of Charles had been. There was no scheme of mechanical govern- ment, no claim of absolutism; there was only the 1 resolve to make the energetic assertion of the king's feudal rights subserve the further aims of the Emperor. What Otto demanded he demanded as Emperor, what he received he received as king ; the singular result was that in Germany the imperial office was itself pervaded and transformed by feudal ideas. Feudality needing, to make its theory com- plete, a lord paramount of the world, from whose grant all ownership in land must be supposed to have emanated, and finding such a suzerain in the Emperor, constituted him liege lord of all kings and potentates, keystone of the feudal arch, himself, as it was expressed,^ holding " the world from God*. There were not wanting koman institutions to which these notions could attach themselves. Constantine, imitating the courts of the East, had made the digni- taries of his household great officials of the State: these were now reproduced in the cup-bearer, the seneschal, the marshal, the chamberlain of the Em- pire, so soon to become its electoral princes. The tenure of land by military service was Roman in its origin : the divided ownership of feudal law found many analogies in the Roman tenure of em- phyteusis. Thus while Germany was Romanized the Empire was feudalized, and came to be con- sidered not the antagonist but the perfection of an aristocratic system. And it was this adaptation to
I
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 143
existing political facts that enabled it afterwards to Ch.viii. assume an international character. Nevertheless, even while they seemed to blend, there remained between the genius of imperialism (if we may use a now perverted word) and that of feudalism a deep and lasting hostility. And so the rule of Otto and his successors was in a measure adverse to feudal polity, not from knowledge of what Roman govern- ment had been, but from the necessities of their position, raised as they were to an unapproachable height above their subjects, surrounded with a halo of sanctity as protectors of the Church. Thus were they driven to reduce^ local independence, and assimi- late the various races through their vast territories. It waS"©fct&^ wKo ina3fe tli'e Germans, hitherto an aggregate of tribes, a single people, and welding them into a strong political body taught them to rise through its collective greatness to the con- sciousness of national life, never thenceforth to be extinguished.
One expedient against the land-holding oligarchy The, Com- which Roman traditions a^ well as present needs ^^• might have suggested, ' it was scarce possible for Otto to use. He could not invoke the friendship of the Third Estate, for as yet none existed. The Teutonic order of freemen, which had two centuries earlier formed the bulk of the population, was now fast disappearing, just as in England all who did not become thanes were classed as ceorls, and from ceorls sank for the most part into serfs. Only in the Alpine valleys and along the shores of the ocean
144 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Gh. YIII. did &ee democratic communities maintain themselves. X Town-life there was none, till Henry the Fowler forced his forest-loving people to dwell in fortresses that might repel the Hungarian invaders; and the burgher class thus beginning to form was too small to be a power in the state. But popular freedom, as it expired, bequeathed to the monarch such of its rights as could be saved from the grasp of the nobles; and the crown thus became what it has been wherever an aristocracy presses upon both, the ally, though as yet the tacit ally, of the people. More, too, than the royal could have done, did the imperial name invite the sympathy of the commons. For in all, however ignorant of its history, however unable to comprehend its functions, there yet lived a feeling that it was in some mysterious way con- secrated to Christian brotherhood and equality, to peace and to laW, to the restraint of the strong and the defence of the helpless.
CHAPTER IX.
SAXON AND FBANCJONIAN BMPEEOES.
He who begins to read the history of the Middle Chap. IX. Ages is alternately amused and provoked by the seeming absurdities that meet him at every step. He finds writers proclaiming amidst imiversal assent magnificent theories which no one attempts to carry out. He sees men who are stained with every vice full of sincere devotion to a religion which, even when its doctrines were most obscured, never sullied the purity of its moral teaching. He is disposed to con- clude that such people must have been either fools or hypocrites. Yet such a conclusion would be wholly erroneous. Every one knows how little a man's actions conform to the general maxims which he would lay down for himself: and how many things there are which he believes without realizing : be- lieves sufficiently to be influenced, yet not sufficiently to be governed by them. Now in the Middle Ages this perpetual opposition of theory and practice was peculiarly abrupt. Men's impulses were more violent and their conduct more reckless than is often wit- nessed in modem society; while the absence of a criticizing and measuring spirit made them surrender their minds more unreservedly than they would now
L ,
146
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. IX. do to a complete and imposing theory. Therefore it was that while every one believed in the Empire^s rights as a part of divine truth, no one would yield to them where nis own passions or interests interfered. Resistance to Uod's" Vicar migKt Be and indeed was admitted to be a deadly sin, but it was one which nobody hesitated to commit. Hence, in order to give this unbounded imperial prerogative any practical efficiency, it was found necegaary to prop it up by the limited but tangible authority of a feudal king.
I And the one spot in Otto's empire on which feu- dality had never fixed its grasp, and where there- fore he was forced to rule merely as Emperor, was that in which he and his successors were never safe
*from insult and revolt. That spot was his capital. Accordingly an account of what befel the first Saxon Emperor in Rome is the fitting comment on the theory expounded above, as well as a curious episode in the history of the Apostolic Chair.
After his coronation Otto had returned to North Italy^ where the partizans of Berengar and his son Adalbert still maintained themselves in arms. Scarcely was he gone when the restless John XII, who found too late that in seeking an ally he had given himself a master, renounced his alle- giance, opened negotiations with Berengar, and even scrupled not to send envoys pressing the heathen Magyars to invade Germany. The Emperor was soon informed of these plots, as well as of the flagitious life of the pontifi*, a youth of twenty-five, the most profligate if not the most guilty of all
Otto the Greai in Borne.
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 147
who have worn the tiara. But he affected to de- Chap. IX. spise them, saying, with a sort of unconscious irony, ^^ He is a boy, the example of good men may reform him/' When, however, Otto returned with a strong force, he found the city gates shut, and a party within fiirious against him. John XII was not only Pope, but as the heir of Alberic, the head of a strong faction among the nobles, and a sort of temporal prince in the city. But neither he nor they had courage enough to stand a siege : John fled into the Campagna to join Adalbert, and Otto entering convoked a synod in St. Peter's. Himself presiding as temporal head of the Church, he began by inquiring into the character and manners of the Pope. At once a tempest of accusations burst forth from the assembled clergy. Liudprand, a credible although a hostile witness, gives us a long list of them : — " Peter, cardinal-priest, rose and witnessed that he had seen the Pope celebrate mass and not himself communicate. John, bishop of Namia, and John, cardinal-deacon, declared that they had seen him ordain a deacon in a ^able, neglecting the proper formalities. They said further, that he had defiled by shameless acts of vice the pontifical palace ; that he had openly diverted himself with hunting; had put out the eyes of his spiritual fether Bene- dict j had set fire to houses ; had girt himself with a sword, and put on a helmet and hauberk. All present, laymen as well as priests, cried out that he had drunk to the devil's health; that in throw- ing the dice he had invoked the help of Jupiter,
L %
148 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. IX. Venus, and other demons ; that he had celebrated matins at uncanonical hours, and had hot fortified himself by making the sign of the cross. After these things the Emperor, who could not speak Latin, since the Romans could not understand his native, that is to say, the Saxon tongue, bade Liud- prand bishop of Cremona interpret for him, and adjured the council to declare whether the charges they had brought were true, or sprang only of malice and envy. Then all the clergy and people cried with a loud voice, ' If John the Pope hath not com- mitted all the crimes which Benedict the deacon hath read over, and even greater crimes than these, then may the chief of the Apostles, the blessed Peter, who by his word closes heaven to the unworthy and opens it to the just, never absolve us from our sins, but may we be bound by the chain of anathema, and on the last day may we stand on the left hand along with those who have said to the Lord God, ' Depart from us, for we will not know Thy ways.^ '*
The solemnity of this answer seems to have satisfied Otto and the council F a letter was despatched to John, couched in respectful terms, recounting the charges brought against him, and asking him to appear to clear himself by his own oath and that of a sufficient number of compurgators. John^s reply was short and pithy.
'^ John the bishop, the servant of the servants of God, to all the bishops. We have heard tell that you wish to set up another Pope : if you do this, by Almighty God I will excommunicate you, so that
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 149
you shall not have power to say the mass or to Chap. IX. ordain no one*/^
To this Otto and the synod replied hy a letter of humorous expostulation, begging the Pope to reform both his morals and his Latin. Sut the messenger who bore it could not find John : he had repeated what seems to have been thought his most heinous sin, by going into the country with his bow and arrows; and after a search had been made in vain, the synod resolved to take a decisive step. Otto, who still led their delibera- Deposition tions, demanded the condemnation of the Pope ; the ^^^'^ assembly deposed him by acclamation, ^^ because of his reprobate life,^^ and having obtained the Em- peror^s consent, proceeded in an equally hasty manner to raise Leo, the chief secretary and a layman, to the chair of the Apostle.
Otto might seem to have now reached a position loftier and firmer than that of any of his prede- cessors. Within little more than a year from his arrival in Rome, he had exercised powers greater than those of Charles himself, ordering the dethrone- ment of one pontiff and the installation of another, forcing a reluctant people to bend themselves to his will. The submission involved in his oath to protect the Holy See was more than compensated by the oath
A '' Joliaiines Episoopus, servus aut nullum ordinare.'* — Liud-
servormn Dei, omnibus episcopis. prand, iU supra. The 'da' is
Nos audivimus dicere quia vps .curious, as shewing the progress
vultis alium Papam f acere : si hoc of the change from Latin to Ita-
fadtis, da Deum omnipotentem lian. The answer sent by Otto
excommunico yos« ut non habe- and the council takes exception
atis licentiam missam celebrare to the double negative.
150 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. IX. of allegiance to his crown which the Pope and the Romans had taken^ and by their solemn engagement not to elect nor ordain any future pontiff without the Emperor's consent*'. But he had yet to learn what this obedience and these oaths were worth. The Romans had eagerly joined in the expulsion of John ; they soon began to regret him. They were mortified to see their streets filled by a foreign soldiery: the habitual licence of their manners sternly repressed : their most cherished privilege, the right of choosing the universal bishop, grasped by the strong hand of a master who used it for purposes in which they did not sympathize. In a fickle and turbulent people, disaffection quickly turned to rebellion. One night. Otto's troops being most of them dispersed in their ReooUofthe quarters at a distance, the Romans rose in arms, Romans, blocked up the Tiber bridges, and fell furiously upon the Emperor and his creature the new Pope. Superior valour and constancy triumphed over numbers, and the Romans were overthrown with terrible slaughter ; yet this lesson did not prevent them from revolting a second time, after Otto's departure in pursuit of Adalbert. John the Twelfth returned to the city, and when his pontifical career was speedily closed by the sword of an injured husband «, the people
^ '' GiveB fidelitatem promit- ^ ** In timporibus adeo a
tunt hiec addentes et firmiter dyabulo est percuBsus nt infra
iurantes nunquam se papam eleo- dienim octo spacium eodem sit
turoB aut ordinaturos praeter con- in viilnere mortuus/' says the
sensum atque electionem domini chronicler, crediting with but
imperatoris Ottonis Ceesaris Au- little of his wonted cleverness
gusti filiiqne ipsius Ottonis." — the supposed author of John's
Liudprand^ Gesta Ottonis, lib. vi. death, who well might have ^^
THE HOL 7 ROMAN EMPIRE. 1 5 1
chose a new Pope in defiance of the Emperor andcHAP. IX. his nominee. Otto again subdued and again forgav6 them^ but when they rebelled for a third time, in A.D. 966, he resolved to shew them what imperial supremacy meant. Thirteen leaders, among them the twelve tribunes, were executed, the consuls were banished, republican forms entirely suppressed, the government of the city entrusted to the Pope as viceroy. He, too, must not presume on the sacred- ness of his person to set up any claims to indepen- dence. Otto regarded the pontiff as no more than the first of his subjects, the creature of his own will, the depositary of an authority which must be ex- ercised according to the discretion of his sovereign. The citizens yielded to the Emperor an absolute veto on papal elections in a.b. 963. Otto obtained from his nominee, Leo VIII, a confirmation of this privilege, which it was afterwards supposed that Hadrian I had granted to Charles, in a decree which may yet be read in the collections of the canon law^. The vigorous exercise of such a power might be expected to reform as well as to restrain the apostolic see ; and it was for this purpose, and in noble honesty, that the Teutonic sovereigns employed it. But the fortunes of Otto in the city are a type of those which his suc- cessors were destined to experience. Notwithstanding
desired a long life for so use- <* Corptts Juris C(m<mici, Dist.
ful a servant. Ixiii., "/» synodo," A decree
He adds a detail too cha- which is probably substantially
racteristic of the t^e to be correct, although the form in
omitted — " Sed eucharistise via- which we have it is evidently of
ticum, ipsius instinctu qui eum later date, percusseraty non percepit."
f
f
152 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. IX. their clear rights and the momentary einthusiasm with which they were greeted in Bome^ not all the efforts of Emperor after Emperor could gain any firm hold on the capital they were so proud of. Visiting it only once or twice in their reigns, they must be supported among a fickle populace by a large army of strangers, which melted away with* terrible ra- pidity under the the sun of Italy amid the deadly hollows of the Campagna®. Rome soon resumed her turbulent independence.
Otto's rule Causcs partly the same prevented the Saxon ^ pnnces irom gaimng a nrm looting throughout Italy.* Since Charles the Bald had bartered away for the crown all that made it worth having, no Emperor had exercised substantial authority there. The missi dominici had ceased to traverse the coun- try; the local governors had thrown off control, a crowd of petty potentates had established princi- palities by aggressions on their weaker neighbours. Only in the dominions of great nobles, like the marquises of Tuscany and Spoleto, and in some of the cities where the supremacy of the bishop was paving the way for a republican system, could traces of political Older be found, or the arts of peace flourish. Otto, who, though he came as a conqueror, ruled legitimately as Italian king, found his feudal vassals less submissive than in Germany. While actually present he succeeded by progresses and
e Cf. St. Peter Damiani'a lines— #
'* Boma vorax hominuiD domat ardua colla vironim, Boma ferax febrium, necis est uberrima frugum, Bomanse febres stabili sunt jure fideles."
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 153
edicts^ and stem justice^ in doing something to still Chap. IX. the turmoil ; on his departure Italy relapsed into that disorganization for which her natural features are not less answerable than the mixture of her races. Yet it was at this era, when the confusion was wildest^ that there appeared the first rudiments of an Italian nationality, based partly on geogra- phical position, partly on the use of a common lan- guage and the slow growth of peculiar customs and modes of thought* But though already jealous of the Tedesean, national feeling was still very far from disputing his sway. Pope, princes, and cities bowed to Otto as king and Emperor; nor did he bethink himself of crushing while it was weak a sentiment whose development threatened the existence of his Empire. Holding Italy equally for his own with Grermany, and ruling both on the same principles, he was content to keep it a separate kingdom, neither changing its institutions nor sending Saxons, as Charles had sent Franks, to represent his govern- ment '.
The lofty claims which Otto acquired with the Otto's Roman crown urged him to resume the plans of -J^J^ foreign conquest which had lain neglected since the days of Charles : the growing vigour of the Teutonic people now definitely separating themselves from surrounding races (this is the era of the marks, Brandenburg, Meissen, Schleswig), placed in his hands a force to execute those plans which his pre-
' There was a separate chancellor for Italy, as afterwards for the kingdom of Burgundy.
154 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. IX. decessors had wanted. In this, as in his other enter- prises, the great Emperor was active, wise, successftd. Retaining the extreme south of Italy, and unwilling to confess the loss of Rome, the Greeks had not ceased to annoy her German masters by intrigue, and might now, under the vigorous leadership of Nicephorus and Tzimiskes, hope again to menace Towards them in arms. Prudence, and the fascination which Byzamttum. ^^ ostentatiously legitimate court exercised over the Saxon stranger, made Otto, as Napoleon wooed Maria Louisa, seek for his heir the hand of the princess Theophanp. Liudprand's account of his embassy represents in an amusing manner the rival pretensions of the old and new Empires. The Greeks, who fancied that with the name they pre- served the character and rights of Rome, held it almost as absurd as it was wicked that a Frank should insult their prerogative by reigning in Italy as Emperor. They refused him that title alto- gether; and when the Pope had, in a letter ad- • dressed ^' Imperatori Grcecorum" asked Nicephorus to gratify the wishes of the Emperor of the Ro- mans, the Eastern was furious. ^^You are no Ro- mans,'^ said he, ^^ but wretched Lombards : what means this insolent Pope? with Constantine all Rome migrated hither.'^ The wily bishop appeased him by abusing the Romans, while he insinuated that Byzantium could lay no claim to their name, and proceeded to vindicate the Francia and Saxonia of his master. ^^ ^ Roman ^ is the most contemptuous
■ Liudprond, Zegcttio ConstantmopoUtana.
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 155
I
name we can use — ^it conveys the reproach of every Chap. IX. vice, cowardice, falsehood, avarice. But what can be expected from the descendants of the fratricide Romulus ? to his asylum were gathered the off- scourings of the nations : thence came these Koo-fio- Kpdropes" Nicephorus demanded the ^Hheme^' or province of Rome as the price of compliance ^ ; Tzimiskes was more moderate, and Theophano be- came the bride of Otto II.
Holding the two capitals of Charles the Great, Towards Otto might vindicate the suzerainty over the West ^^^^ Frankish kingdom which it had been meant that the imperial title should carry with it. Amulf had asserted it by making Eudes, the first Capetian king, receive - the crown as his feudatory : Henry the Fowler had been less successful. Otto pursued the same course, intriguing with the discontented nobles of Louis d'Outremer, and receiving their fealty as Superior of Roman Gaul. These pretensions, how- ever, could have been made effective only by arms, and the feudal militia of the tenth century was no such instrument of conquest as the hosts of Clovis and Charles had been. The star of the Carolingian at Laon was paling before the rising greatness of the Parisian Capets : a Romano-Keltic nation had formed itself, distinct in tongue from the Franks, whom it was fast absorbing, and still less willing to sub- mit to a Saxon stranger. Modern France* dates
^ ** Sancti imperii nostri olim ^ Liudprand calls the Eastern
servos principes, Beneventanmn Franks '*Franci Teutonici" to
scilicet, tradat/' &c. The epi- distinguish them from the Bo-
thet is worth noticing. manized Franks of Ckiul or
U6
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE,
Lorraine and Bur- gundy.
Chap. IX. from the accession of Hugh Capet, a.d. 987, and the claims of the Roman Empire were never after- wards admitted.
Of that Prance, however, Aquitaine was virtually independent* Lotharingiai; and Burgundy helonged to it as little as did England. The former of these kingdoms had adhered to Charles the Simple, against the East Franki A Conrad : but now, as mostly Ger- man in blood and speech, threw itself into the arms of Otto, and was thenceforth an integral part of the Empire. Burgundy, a separate kingdom, had, by seeking from Charles the Fat a ratification of Boso's election, by admitting, in the person of Rudolf the first Transjurane king, the feudal superiority of Amulf, acknowledged itself to be dependent on the German crown.
Otto^s conquests to the North and East approved him a worthy successor of the first Emperor. He penetrated far into Jutland, annexed Schleswig, made Harold the Blue-toothed his vassal. The Slavic tribes Were obliged to submit, to follow the German host in war, to allow the free preaching of the Gospel in their borders. The Hungarians he forced to for- sake their nomad life, and delivered Europe from the fear of Asiatic invasions by strengthening the fron- tier of Austria. Over more distant lands, Spaiji and
Bemnark and the Slaves,
* Francigense,' as tbey were fre- Liudprand says that the Greek quently called. The name *Frank* ' Emperor included " sub Fran- seems even so early as the tenth corum nomine tam Latinos quam century to have been used in Teutonicos." Probably this the East as a general name for dates from the time of Charles, the Western peoples of Europe.
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE,
157
England^ it was not possible to recover the com- Chap, ix manding position of Charles. Henry, as head of the England. Saxon name, had wished to unite its branches on both sides the sea ^, and partly with this intent had gained for Otto the hand of Edith, sister of the English Athelstan. But the claim of supremacy, if any there was, was repudiated by Edgar, when imita- ting the Byzantine style he called himself '^ Basileus of Britain,^^ ^^ Imperator A^igttatiis" ^^ Lord of all the kings and nations in the Ocean Islands ^"
This rftgtnrftd Emr^irp- whifih profpssftd itfifilf a COn- JEkOent of
different. It waa less wide, including, if we reckon strictly, only Germany proper and two^thilds of Italy; or counting in subject but separate king- doms, Burgundy, Bohemia, Moravia, Poland, Den- Compari- mark, perhaps Hungary. It was less^^eccjggjfliptical. J^^^^^ Otto exalted indeed the spiritual potentates of his that of realm, and was earnest in spreading Christianity among the heathen : he was master of the Pope and Defender of the Holy Roman Church. But taIiotati ^eld„^,^ypfi innpnrfflTif. placc in his mind and his administration : he m^deiewer wars tor its sake, neT5" no ' gbuncils, and did not," like ms pre* decessor, criticize the discourses of bishops. It was also less Roman. We do not know whether Otto associated with that name anjrthing more than the right to universal dominion and a certain oversight
^ Conring, De Finibus Im- kings. ''Imperator Augustus"
periL is finbrn Giesebrecht, who does not
1 Basileus was the favourite give his authority (i. p. 456). title of succeeding Anglo-Saxon
Cha/ries.
158 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. IX. of matters spiritual, nor how far lie believed him- ~ self to be treading in the steps of the Caesars. He could not_speak Latin, he had few learned men around him, he cannot have possessed the varied cultivation which had been so fruitful in the mind of Charles. Moreover, the conditions of his time were different, and did not permit similar attempts at jride organization, "ffie locaF potentates would have submitted to no misd dominici; separate laws and jurisdictions would not have yielded to imperial capitularies; the pladta at which those laws were framed\)r published would not have been crowded, as of yore, by armed freemen. But what Otto could he did, and did it to purpose. Constantly traversing his dominions, he introduced a peace and prosperity before unknown, and left everywhere the impress of an heroic character. Under him the Germans became not only a united nation, but were at once raised on a pinnacle among European peoples as the imperial race, the possessors of Rome and Rome^s authority. While the political connection with Italy stirred their spirit, it brought with it a knowledge and ctdture hitherto unknown, and gave the newly- kindled energy an object. Germany became in her turn the instructress of the neighbouring tribes, who trembled at Otto's sceptre; Poland and Bohemia received from her their arts and their learning with their religion. If the revived Romano-Germanic Empire was less splendid than the Western Empire had been under Charles, it was, within narrower limits, firmer, and more lasting, since based on a
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 159
social force which the other had wanted. It per- Chap. IX. petuated the name^ the langpiage^ the literature, such as it then was, of Rome; it extended her spiritual sway; it strove to represent that concen- tration for which men cried, and became a power to unite and civilize Europe.
The time of Otto the Great has required a fuller Otto III, treatment, as the era of the Holy Empire^s foun- t^2.^ ^~ dation : succeeding rulers may be more quickly dismissed. Yet Otto IIFs reign cannot pass un- noticed : short, sad, full of bright promise never fulfilled. His mother was the Greek princess Theo- phano ; his preceptor, the illustrious Gerbert : through the one he felt himself connected with the old Empire, and had imbibed the absolutism of Byzantium; by the other he had been reared in the dream of a renovated Rome, with her memories turned to realities. To accomplish that renovation, who so fit as he who with the vigorous blood of the Teutonic conqueror inherited the vene- rable rights of Constantinople? It was his design, HU plans now that the solemn millennial era of the found- *^ ^' ing of Christianity had arrived, to renew the majesty of the city and make her again the capital of a world-embracing Empire, victorious as Trajan's, de- spotic as Justinian's, holy as Constantino's. His young and visionary mind was too much dazzled by the gorgeous fancies it created to see the world as it was : Germany rude, Italy unquiet, Rome corrupt and faithless. In a.b. 994, at the age of sixteen, he took from his mother's hands the reins
1 60 THE HOL 7 ROMA N EMPIRE.
Chap. IX. of government, and entered Italy to receive his '. crown, and quell the turbulence of Rome. There
he put to death the rebel Crescentius, in whom modem enthusiasm has seen a patriotic republican, who, reviving the institutions of Alberic, had ruled as consul or senator, sometimes titling himself Em- peror". The young monarch reclaimed, perhaps extended, the privilege of Charles and Otto the Great, by nominating successive pontiffs : first Bruno his cousin (Gregory V), then Gerbert, whose name of Sylvester II recalled significantly the ally of Constantine : Gerbert, to his contemporaries a marvel of piety and learning, in later legend the magician who, at the price of his own soul, pur- chased preferment from the Enemy, and by him was at last carried off in the body. With the substitution of these men for the profligate priests of Italy, began that Teutonic reform of the Papacy which raised it from the abyss of the tenth cen- tury to the point where Hildebrand found it. The Emperors were working the ruin of their power by their most disinterested acts.
With his tutor on Peter's chair to second or direct him. Otto laboured on his great project in a spirit almost mystic. He had an intense religious belief in the Emperor's duties to the world — in his proclama- tions he calls himself ^^ Servant of the Apostles,^' ^^ Servant of Jesus Christ ^ '^ — together with the
™ The coins of Crescentius are probably some at least of them
said to exhibit the insignia of are forgeries,
the old Empire — Palgrave, Nor- " Proclamation in Pertz, M.
mcmdy and England, i. 7 r5. But Q. H.^ legum ii.
THE HOLT BOM AN EMPIRE. 161
ambitious antiquarianism of a fiery imagination^ Chap. OL kindled by the memorials of the glory and power he represented. Even the wording of his laws witnesses to the strange mixture of notions that filled his eager brain. ^^We have ordained this/' says an edict, ^^in order that, the church of God being freely and firmly stablished, our Empire may be advanced and the crown of our knight- hood triumph ; that the power of the Roman people may be extended and the commonwealth be restored ; so may we be found worthy after living righteously in the tabernacle of this world, to fly away from the prison of this life and reign most righteously with the Lord.'' To exclude the claims of the Greeks he used the title ^^Romanorum ImperatoT^^ instead of the simple ^' Imperator^^ of his predecessors. His seals bear a legend resem- bling that struck by Charles, " Renovatio Imperii Bomanorum;'' even the conmionwealth, despite the results that name had produced under Alberic and Crescentius, was to be re-established. He built a palace on the Aventine, then the most healthy and beautiful quarter of the city; he devised a regular administrative system of the government of his capital — naming a patrician, a prefect, and a body of judges ; who were commanded to recognize no law but Justinian's. The formula of their appoint- ment has been preserved to us: in it the Emperor delivering to the judge a copy of the code bids him ^^with this code judge Rome and the Leonine city and the whole world." He introduced into
M
162 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. IX. the simple German court the ceremonious magni- licence of Byzantium, not without giving offence to many of his followers**. His father's wish to draw Italy and Germany more closely together, he followed up by giving the chancellorship of both countries to the same churchman, by maintaining a strong force of Germans in Italy, and by taking his Italian retinue with him through the Trans- alpine lands. How far these brilliant and far- reaching plans were capable of realization, had their author lived to attempt it, can be but guessed at. It is reasonable to suppose that whatever power he might have gained in the South he would have lost in the North. Dwelling rarely in Germany, and in mind more a Greek than a Teuton, he reined, in the fierce barons with no such tight hand as his grandfather had been wont to do ; he neglected the schemes of northern conquest; he released the Polish dukes from the obligation of tribute. But all, save that those plans were his, is now no more than conjecture, for Otto III, ''the wonder of the world,'' as his owit generation called him, died childless on the threshold of manhood; the victim, if we may trust a story of the time, of the revenge of Stephania, widow of Crescentius, who ensnared him by her beauty, and slew him by a lingering poison. They carried him across the Alps with laments whose echoes sound faintly
*> " Imperator antiquam Ro- faciebat quae diversi diverse sen-
maDomiu coDSuetudinem iam ex tiebant." — ^Thietmar» Chron. ix. ;
magna parte deletam suis cu- ap. Pertz, if. (?. H,^ t. iii. piens renovare temporibus multa
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
163
yet from the pages of monkish chroniclers, and Chap. IX. buried him in the choir of the basilica at Aachen some twenty paces from the tomb of Charles be- neath the central dome. Two years had not passed since, setting out on his last journey to Rome, he had opened that tomb, had gazed on the great Emperor, sitting on a marble throne, robed and crowned, with the Gospel-book open before him; and there, touching the dead hand, unclasping from the neck its golden cross, had taken, as it were, an investiture of Empire from his Prankish fore- runner. Short as was his life and few his acts. Otto III is in one respect more memorable than any who went before or came after him. None save he desired to make the seven-hilled city again the seat of dominion, reducing Germany and Lom- bardy and Greece to their rightful place of subject province! No lJire*«tee^'So forgot the present to live ui the light of the ancient order: no other soul was so possessed by that fervid mysticism and that reverence for the glories of the past, whereon rested the idea of the mediaBval Empire. \
The direct line of Otto the Great had now ended, and though the Franks might elect and the Saxons accept Henry II p, Italy was nowise affected by their acts. Neither the Empire nor the Lombard king- dom could as yet be of right claimed by the German king. Her princes placed Ardoin, marquis of Ivrea, Italy inde- on the vacant throne of Pavia, moved partly by the ^^ ^^* growing aversion to a Transalpine power, still more
P AnnaUs QwcUinb., ad ann. 1002. U2
i :• t THE HOL T ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. IX. by the desire of impunity under a monarch feebler than any since Berengar. But the selfishness that had exalted Ardoin soon overthrew him. Ere long a party among the nobles, seconded by the Pope, invited Henry ^ ; his strong army made opposition hopeless, and at Rome he received the imperial Hervry II crown, A. D. 1014. It is, perhaps, more singular Em/pei^or. ^j^^^^ ^j^^ Transalpine kings should have clung so
pertinaciously to Italian sovereignty than that the Lombards should have so frequently attempted to re- cover their independence. For the former had often little or no hereditary claim, they were not secure in their seat at home, they crossed a huge mountain barrier into a land of treachery and hatred. But Bome^s glittering lure was irresistible, and Italjr's disunion promised an easy conquest. Surrounded by martial vassals, these Emperors were generally for the moment supreme: once their pennons had disappeared in the gorges of Tyrol, things reverted to their former condition, and Tuscany was little Southern more dependent than France. In Southern Italy '"^' the Greek viceroy ruled from Bari, and Rome was the outpost instead of the centre of empire. A curious evidence of the wavering politics of the time is furnished by the Annals of Benevento, the Lombard town which on the confines of the Greek and Roman realms gave steady obedience to neither. They usually date by and recognize the princes of Constantinople', seldom mentioning the Franks, till
1 Henry had already entered ^ Annales Beneventani,mTeTtz, Italy in 1004. M. Q. H,
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 165
the reign of Conrad II ; after him the Western Chap. IX. becomes ImperatoTy the Greek, appearing more rarely, is Imperator Constantinopolitanus. Assailed by the Saracens, lords already of Sicily, these regions seemed on the eve of being lost to Christendom, and the Romans sometimes bethought themselves of retam- ing under the Byzantine sceptre. As the weakness of the South favoured the rise of the Norman king- dom, so did the liberties of the northern cities shoot up in the absence of the Emperors and the feuds of the princes. Milan, Pavia, Cremona, were only the foremost among many populous centres of industry, some of them self-governing, aU quickly absorbing or repelling the rural nobility, and not afraid to display by tumults their aversion to the Germans.
The reign of Conrad II, the first monarch of the Cmrad II. great Franconian Une, is remarkable for the accession to the Empire of Burgundy, or, as it is afber this time more often called, the kingdom of Aries*. Rudolf III, the last king, had proposed to bequeath it to Henry II, and the states were at length per- suaded to consent to its reunion to the crown from which it had been separated, though to some extent dependent, since the death of Lothar I (son of Lewis the Pious). Unlike Italy, it became an integral member of the Germanic realm, its prelates and nobles sat in imperial diets, and retained till recently the style and title of Princes of the Holy Empire. The central government was, however, seldom efltec- tive in these outlying territories, exposed always to
* See Appendix, Note A.
1 66 THE HOL Y ROMA N EMPIRE.
Chap. IX. the intrigues, finally to the aggressions, of Capetian France.
Hmryiii. Under Conrad^s son Henry III, the Empire at- tained the meridian of its power. At home. Otto Fs prerogative had not stood so high. The duchies, always the chief source of fear, were allowed to re* main vacant or filled by the relatives of the monarch, who himself retained, contrary to usual practice, those of Franconia and (for some years) Swabia. Abbeys and sees lay entirely in his gift. Intestine feuds were repressed by the proclamation of a public peace. Abroad, the feudal superiority over Hungary, which Henry II had gained by conferring the title of King with the hand of his sister Gisela, was en- forced by war, the country made almost a province.
His reform and compelled to pay tribute. In Rome no German
dom, ^^ sovereign had ever been so absolute. A disgraceful contest between three claimants of the papal chair had shocked even the reckless apathy of Italy. Henry deposed them all, and appointed their suc- cessor: he became hereditary patrician, and wore constantly the green mantle and circlet of gold which were the badges of that office, seeming, one might think, to find in it some further authority than that which the imperial name conferred. The synod passed a decree granting to Henry the right of nominating the supreme pontiff j and the Roman priesthood, who had forfeited the respect of the world even more by habitual simony than by the flagrant coiTuption of their manners, were forced to receive German after German as their bishop.
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 167
at the bidding of a ruler so powerful, so severe. Chap. IX. and so pious. But Henry's encroachments alarmed his own nobles no less than the Italians, and the reaction, which might have been dangerous to him- self, was fatal to his successor. A mere chance, as some might call it, determined the course of history. The great Emperor died suddenly in a.d. 1056, and a child was left at the helm, while storms were gathering that might have demanded the wisest hand.
CHAPTER X.
STUXTOGLE OF THE EUPUUB AND THE FAf ACT.
Chap. X. Ebformed by the Emperors and their Teutonic nominees, the Papacy had resumed in the middle of the eleventh century the schemes of polity- shadowed forth by Nicholas I, and which the de- gradation of the last age had only interrupted. Under the guidance of her greatest mind, the archdeacon Hildebrand^ she now advanced to their completion, and proclaimed that war of the eccle- siastical power against the civil power in the person of the Emperor, which became the centre of the sub- sequent history of both. While the nature of "the struggle cannot be understood without a glance at their previous, connection, the vastness of the sub- ject warns us from the attempt to draw even its outlines, and restricts our view to the relations of Popedom and Empire which arise out of their position as heads spiritual and temporal of the universal Christian state. Growth of The eagerness of Christianity in the age imme- pmoer!^ diately following her political establishment to pur- chase by submission the support of the civil power, has been already remarked. The change from in- dependence to supremacy was gradual. The tale we
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 169
smile at, how Constantine, healed of his leprosy. Chap. X. granted the West to bishop Sylvester, and retired to Byzantium that no secular prince might interfere with the jurisdiction or profene the neighbourhood of Peter's chair, worked great effects through the belief it commanded for many centuries. Nay more, its groundwork was true. It was the removal of the seat of government from the Tiber to the Bos- phorus that made the Pope the greatest personage in the city, and in the prostration after Alaric's invasion he was seen to be so. Henceforth he alone was a permanent and effective, though still unacknowledged power, as truly superior to the re- vived senate and consuls of the phantom republic as Augustus and Tiberius had been to the faint continuance of their earlier prototypes. Pope Leo the First* asserted the universal jurisdiction of his see, and his persevering successors slowly enthralled Italy, Illyricum, Gaul, Spain, Africa, dexterously confounding their undoubted metropolitan and pa- triarchal rights with those of oecumenical bishop, in which they were finally merged. By his writings and the fame of his personal sanctity, by the con- version of England and the introduction of an im- pressive ritual, Gregory the Great did more than any other to advance Rome's ecclesiastical authority. Yet his tone to Maurice of Constantinople was de- ferential, to Phocas adulatory; his successors were not consecrated till confirmed by the Emperor or
* Boma per sedem Beati Petri caput orbis effecta. — See note ^ P-34-
170
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. X. the Exarch ; one of them was dragged in chains ■ to the Bosphorus, and banished thence to Sc3rthia. When the iconoclastic controversy and the inter- vention of Pipin broke the allegiance of the Popes to the East^ the Franks^ as patricians and Emperors^ seemed to step into the position which Byzantium had lost^ At Charleses coronation^ says the Saxon poet,
'' , ** Et summus eundem
Pnesul adoravit, idcat mos debitua olim Principibus fuit antiquis."
RdatioM of the Papacy and the Empire.
Their relations were, however, no longer the same. If the Prank vaunted conquest, the priest spoke only of free gift. What Christendom saw was that Charles was crowned by the Pope^s hands, and undertook as his principal duty the protection and advancement of the Holy Boman Church. The circumstances of Otto the Great's coronation gave an even more favourable opening to sacerdotal claims, for it was a Pope who summoned him to Rome and a Pope who received from him an oath of fidelity and aid. In the conflict of three powers, the Emperor, the pontiff^, and the people — repre- sented by their senate and consuls, or by the demagogue of the hour — the most steady, prudent, and far-sighted was sure eventually to prevail. The Popedom had no minorities, as yet few disputed successions, few revolts within its own army — ^the
^ "Claves tibi ad regnwm, di- liniu; Mnratori, Scriptores Re- misimus." — Pope Stephen to rumltalicarum. Some, howeyer, Charles Martel, in Codex Caro' prefer to read ' ad rogum/
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 171
host of churchmen through Europe, Boniface^s Chap. X. conversion of Germany, under its direct sanction, gave it a hold on the rising hierarchy of the greatest European state ; the extension of the rule of Charles and Otto diffused in the same measure its emissaries and pretensions. The first flippyfpg f.nrnAr^ ^n the riffht of the prince to confirm the elected pontiff, which was afterwards supposed to have been granted by Hadrian I to Charles, in the decree quoted as ^^Hadrianiis Papa^,^^ This "jus eligendi et ordinandi svmmum pontificem" which Lewis I appears as yield- ing by the "Ego LudovicMS"^/' was claimed by the Carolingians whenever they felt themselves strong enough, and having fallen into desuetude in the troublous times of the Italian Emperors, was formally renewed to Otto the Great by his no- minee Leo VIII. We have seen it used, and used in the purest spirit, by Otto himself, by his grandson Otto III, last of all, and most despotically, by Henry III. Along with it there had grown up a bold ^ counter-assumption of the Papal chair to be itself the source of the imperial dignity. Lewis iihe l^ious, submitting to a &esh coronation, admitted the invalidity of his former self-performed one: Charles the Bald did not scout the arrogant declaration of John VIII®, that to him alone the Emperor owed his crown; and the
^ Corpus JurU Canonici, Diet. ^ ** Nos elegimus merito et
bdii. C.12. approbavimua una cum smnisu
^ Dist. Ixiii. c. 30. This de- et voto patrum amplique senatus
cree is, however, generally sup- et gentis togatss/' Ac, ap. Baron,
posed to be spurious. Ann, Ecd,j ad ann. 876.
172 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. X. council of Pavia ', when it chose him king of Italy, repeated the assertion. Subsequent Popes knew better than to apply to the chiefs of Saxon and Pranconian chivalry language which the feeble Neustrian had not resented; but the precedent remained, the weapon was only hid behind the pontifical robe to be flashed out with effect when the moment should come. Two other great steps had papal power taken. By the invention and adoption of the False Decretals it had a legal system smted to any emergency, and which gave it unlimited authority through the Christian world in causes spiritual and over persons ecclesiastical. Canonistical ingeni^ity found it easy in one way or another to ipoiake this include all causes and persons whatsoever: for crime is also sin, nor can aught be anywhere done which may not affect
Temporal the clergy. On the gift^^of Pipin and Charles, fr^i. repeated and confirmed by Lewis I, Charles II, Otto I and III, and now made to rest on the more venerable authority of the first Christian Emperor, it could found claims to tl^ggyereignty of^Bome, Tuscany, and all else that had belonged to the exarchate. Indefinite in their terms, these grants were never meant by the donors to convey fiill dominion over the districts — ^that belonged to the head of the Empire — but only as in the case of other Church estates, a perpetual usufruct or
' " Divina vos pietas B. prin- mum pontificem ... ad impe-
dpimi apostolorom Petri et riale calmen S. Spiritiu judido
Paul! iBterventione per vicarium provexit." — Condi, TicineMt, in
ipsorum dominum Joamiem sum- Mur., S. R. J., u.
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 173
utile. Nor had th^y been ever realized in Chap. X. act: the Pope had been hitherto the victim, not the lord, of the neighbouring barons. They were not, however, denied, and might be made a for- midable engine of attack : appealing to them, the Pope could brand his opponents as unjust and im- pious; and could summon nobles and cities to de- fend him as their liege lord, just as, with no better original right, he invoked the help of the Norman conquerors of Naples and Sicily.
The attitude of the Roman Church to the imperial power at Henry IIFs death was externally respectful. The right of a German king to the crown of the city was undoubted, and the Pope was his lawful subject. Hitherto the initiative in reform had come from the civil magistrate. But the secret of the pontiflPe strength lay in this : he^ an<ij ^ft alnnft. could
confer thp orcwKm^ and hn/l fli^rpfnrp t^? ^^^r^^ of
imposiiig conditions on its recipient. Frequent inter- regna had^weakenedtEe power and the claim of the Transalpine monarch; his title was never by law hereditary: the holy Church had before sought and might again seek a defender elsewhere. And since the need of such defence had originated this transfer- ence of the Empire from the Greeks to the Franks, since to render it was the Emperor's chief function, it was surely the Pope^s duty as well as his right to see that the candidate was capable of fiilfilling his task, to degrade him if he rejected or misper- formed it.
The first step was to remove a blemish in the con-
/
174 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPISE.
Chap. X. stitution of the Church, by fixing a regular body to EUdebran- choose the wearer of the tiara. This Nicholas II did dim in ^.D. 1059, feebly reserving the rights of Henry IV
and his successors. Then the reforming spirit, kindled by the abuses and depravity of the last centuiy, advanced apace. It had two main objects : the en- forcement of celibacy, especially on the secular clergy, who enjoyed in this respect considerable freedom, and the extinction of simony. In the former, the Empe- rors and a large part of the laity were not unwilling to join : the latter no one dared to defend in theory. But when Gregory VII declared that it was sin for the ecclesiastic .to receive his benefice under con- ditions from a layman, and so condemned the whole system of feudal investitures to the clergy, he aimed a deadly blow at all secular authority. Half of the land and wealth of Germany was in the hands of bishops and abbots, who would now be freed from the monarches control to pass under that of the Pope. In such a state of things government itself would be impossible. Benry IV Henry and Gregory already mistrusted each other : ^ory vii ^^^ ^^^^ decree war was inevitable. The Pope cited his opponent to appear and be judged at Rome for his vices and misgovernment. The Emperor* replied by convoking a synod, which deposed and insulted Gregory. At once the dauntless monk pronounced Henry excommunicate, and fixed a day on which, if still unrepentant, he should cease to reign. Sup-
8 Strictly speaking, Henry was Romans : he was not crowned at this time only king of the Emperor at Borne till 1084.
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 175
portefd by his own princes, the monarch might have Chap. X. defied a mandate backed by no external force ; but the Saxons, never contented since the first place had passed from their own dukes to the Franconians, only waited the signal to burst into a new revolt, whilst through aU Germany the Emperor's tyranny and irregularities of life had sown the seeds of disaffec- tion. Shimned, betrayed, threatened, he rushed into ^what seemed the only course left, and Canosa saw Europe's mightiest prince, titular lord of the world, aj). 1077. a suppliant before the successor of the Apostles. Henry soon found that his humiliation had not served him; driven back into opposition, he defied Gregory anew, set up an anti-pope, overthrew the rival whom his rebellious subjects had raised, and main- tained to the end of his sad and chequered life a power often depressed but never destroyed. Never- theless had all other humiliation been spared, that one scene in the yard of the Countess Matilda's castle, an imperial penitent, standing barefoot and woollen-frocked on the snow three days and nights, till the priest who sat within should admit and ab- solve him, was enough to mark a decisive change, and inflict an irretrievable disgrace on the crown so abased. Its wearer could no more, with the same lof^^nfidence, claim to be the Inghest power on earth, created by and answerable to God alone. Qregory" had eStiorte3'£Ee* recognition of that ab- solute superiority of the spiritual dominion which he was wont to assert so sternly; proclaiming that to the Pope, as God's vicar, all mankind are subject.
176 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE,
Chap. X. and all rulere responsible : so that he, the giver of the crown, may also excommunicate and depose. Writing to William the Conqueror, he says'* : ^^ For as for the beauty of this world, that it may be at different seasons perceived by fleshly eyes, God hath disposed the sun and the moon, lights that outshine all others ; so lest the creature whom His goodness hath formed after His own image in this world should be drawn astray into fatal dangers, He hath provided in the apostolic and royal dignities the means of
ruling it through divers offices If I^
therefore, am to answer for thee on the dreadfiilday of judgment before the just Judge who cannot lie, the creator of every creature, bethink thee whether I must not very diligently provide for thy salvation, and whether, for thine own safety, thou oughtest not without delay to obey me, that so thou mayest possess the land of the living/^
Gregory was not the inventor nor the first pro- pounder of these doctrines ; they had been long before a part of mediaeval Christianity, interwoven with its most vital doctrines. But he was the first who dared to apply them to the world as he found it. His was that rarest and grandest of gifts, an intellectual courage and power of imaginative belief which, when it has convinced itself of aught, accepts it fully with all its consequences, and shrinks not from acting at once upon it. A perilous gift, as the melancholy end of his own career proved, for men were found less
«
^ Letter of Gregonr VII to William I, A.D. 1080. I quote firom Migne, t. cxlviii. p. 568.
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 177
ready than he had thought them to follow out with Chap. X. unswerving consistency like his the principles which all acknowledged. But it was the very suddenness and boldness of his policy that secured the ultimate triumph of his cause, awing men^s minds and making that seem realized which had been till then a vague theory. His premises once admitted, — and no one dreamt of denying them, — the reasonings by which he established the superiority q^ Rpir'^"^! t^ tpirr^^'^^ jurisdiction were unassailable. With his authority, in whose hands are the keys of heaven and hell, whose word can bestow eternal bliss or plunge in everlasting misery, no other earthly authority can compete or interfere ; if his power extends into the infinite, how much more must he be supreme over things finite? It was thus that Gregory and his successors were wont to argue : the wonder is, not that they were obeyed, but that they were not obeyed more implicitly. In the jsecond sentence of excom- munication which Gregory passed upon Henry the Fourth are these words : —
" Come now, I beseech you, O most holy and blessed Fathers and Princes, Peter and Paul, that all the world may understand and know that if ye are able to bind and to loose in heaven, ye are likewise able on earth, according to the merits of each man, to give and to take away empires, kingdoms, prince- doms, marquisates, duchies, countships, and the pos- sessions of all men. For if ye judge spiritual things, what must we believe to be your power over worldly things ? and if ye judge the angels who rule over
178 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. X. all proud princes^ what can ye not do to their
Results of Doctrines such as these do indeed strike equally at « ^^9 ^' ^ temporal governments, nor were the Innocents and Bonifaces of later days slow to apply them so. On the Empire, however, the blow fell first and heaviest. As when Alaric entered Rome, the spell of ages was broken, Christendom saw her greatest and most venerable institution dishonoured and help- less; allegiance was no longer undivided, for who could presume to fix in each case the limits of the civil and ecclesiastical jurisdictions ? • The potentates of Europe beheld in the Papacy a force which, if dangerous to themselves, could be made to repel the pretensions and baflBe the designs of the strongest and haughtiest among them. Italy learned how to meet the Teutonic conqueror by gaining the Papal sanction for the leagues of her cities. The German princes, anxious to narro\y the prerogative of their head, were the natural allies of his enemy, whose spiritual thunders, more terrible than their own lances^ could enable them to depose an aspiring monarch, or extort from him any concessions they desired. Their altered tone is marked by the promise they required from Rudolf of Swabia, whom they set up as a rival to Henry, tljat he would not endeavour to make the throne hereditary.
It is not possible here to dwell on the details of this struggle, rich as it is in the interest of adventure and character, momentous as were its results for the future. A word or two must suffice to describe the
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 179
conclusion, not indeed of the whole drama, which was Chap. X. to extend over centuries, but of what may be called its first act. Even that act lasted beyond the lives of the original performers. Gregory the Seventh passed away at Salerno in a.d. 1087, exclaiming with his last breath '^I have loved justice and hated iniquity, therefore I die in exile.^^ Twenty years later, in a.d. 1106, Henry IV died, dethroned by an unnatural son, whom the hatred of a relentless PontiflF had raised in rebellion against him. But that son, the Emperor Henry V, so far from conceding the points in dispute, proved an antagonist more ruthless and not less able than his father. He claimed for his crown all the rights over ecclesiastics that his predecessors had ever enjoyed, and when at his coro- nation in Bome, a.d. iiia. Pope Paschal II refiised to complete the rite until he should have yielded, Henry seized both Pope and cardinals and compelled them by a rigorous imprisonment to consent to a treaty which he dictated. Once set free, the Pope, as was natural, disavowed his extorted concessions, and the struggle was protracted for ten years longer, until nearly half a century had elapsed from the first quarrel between Gregory VII and Henry IV. The Concordat of Worms, concluded in a.d. 1122, was in Cmcordat form a compromise, designed to spare either party ^J^^^' the humiliation of defeat. Yet the Papacy remained master of the field. The Emperor retained but one- half of those rights of investiture which had formerly been his. He could never resume the position of Henry III j his wishes or intrigues might influence
180 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE,
Chap. X. the proceedings of a chapter, his oath bound him from open interference. He had entered the strife in the fulness of dignity; he came out of it with tarnished glory and shattered power. His wars had been hitherto carried on with foreign foes, or at worst with a single rebel noble ; now his steadiest ally was turned into his fiercest assailant, and had enlisted against him half his court, half the magnates of his realm. At any moment his sceptre might be shivered in his hand by the bolt of anathema, and a host of enemies spring up from every convent and cathedral.
Th^ Crw Two other results of this great conflict ought not to pass unnoticed. The Emperor was alienated from the Church at the most unfortunate of all moments, the era of the Crusades. To conduct a great religious war against the enemies of the faith, to head the Church militant in her carnal as the Popes were accustomed to do in her spiritual strife, this was the very purpose for which an Emperor had been called into being; and it was indeed in these wars, more particularly in the first three of them, that the ideal of a Christian commonwealth which the theory of the mediaeval Empire proclaimed, was once for all and never again realized by the combined action of the great nations of Europe. Had such an opportunity fallen to the lot of Henry III, he might have used it to win back a supremacy hardly inferior to that which had belonged to the first Carolingians. But Henry IV^s proscription excluded him from all share in an enterprise which he must otherwise have led — nay.
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 181
more^ committed it to the guidance of his foes. The Chap. X. religious feeling which the Crusades evoked — ^a feel- ing which became the origin of the great orders of chivalry, and somewhat later of the two great orders •
of mendicant friars — turned wholly against the op- ponent of ecclesiastical claims, and was made to work the will of the Holy See, which had blessed and organized the project. A century and a half later the Pope did not scruple to preach a crusade against the Emperor himself.
Again : it was now that the first seeds were sown i of that fear and hatred wherewith the German people / never thenceforth ceased to regard the encroaching Romish court. Branded by the Church, and forsaken by the nobles, Henry IV retained the affections of the faithful burghers of Worms and Liege. It soon became the test of Teutonic patriotism to resist Italian priestcraft.
The changes in the internal constitution of Ger- many which the long anarchy of Henry IV^s reign had produced are seen when the. nature of the pre- rogative as it stood at the accession of Conrad II, the first Franconian Emperor, is compared with its state at Henry V^s death. All fiefs are now hereditary, and when vacant can be granted afresh only by con- sent of the States ; the jurisdiction of the crown is less wide; the idea is beginning to make progress that the most essential part of the Empire is not its supreme head but the commonwealth of princes and barons. Their greatest triumph is in the es- tablishment of the elective principle, which when
182 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE,
Chap. X. confirmed by the three free elections of Lothar II, LotlMr II Conrad IH and Frederick I, passes into an un- I "5-" 38. doubted law*. The Prince-Electors are mentioned • in A«D. 1 1 56 as a distinct and important body. The
clergy, too^ whom the policy of Otto the Great and Henry II had raised, are now not less dangerous than the dukes, whose power it was hoped they would balance ; possibly more so, since protected by their sacred character and their allegiance to the Pope, while able at th^ same time to command the arms of their countless vassals. Nor were the two succeeding Emperors the men to retrieve those disasters^ The Saxon Lothar the Second is the willing minion of the Pope; performs at his coro- nation a menial service unknown before, and takes a more stringent oath to defend the Holy See, that he may purchase its support against the Swabian Conrad faction in his own dominions. Conrad the Third, the J '2"^ " fi^^ Emperor of the great house of Hohenstaufen *^,
^ '' Gradum statim post Prin- Bavaria. Of the castle itself
cipes Electores." — Frederick I's destroyed in the Peasants* War,
Privilege of Austria, in Pertz, there remain only fragments of
M. O. H. legg. ii. the wall -foundations : in a rude
^ Hohenstaufen is a castle in chapel lying on the hill slope
what is now the kingdom of Wiir- below are some strange half-ob-
temberg, about four miles from literated frescoes ; over the arch
the Goppingen station of the rail- of the door is inscribed ** Hie
way from Stuttgart to Ulm. It transibat Ctesar." Frederick
stands, or rather stood, on the had another famous palace at
summit of a steep and lofty Kaiserslautem ; a small town on
conical hill, commanding a the railway from Manoheim to
boundless view over the great Treves, lying in a wide valley at
limestone plateau of the Kaube the western foot of the Hardt
. Alp, the eastern declivities of mountains, in what is now the
the Schwartzwald, and the bare Bavarian Palatinate. It was de-
and tedious plains of western stroyed by the French : and a
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 183
represents the anti-papal party; but domestic troubles Chap. X. and an unfortunate crusade prevented him from effectr ing anything in Italy. He never even entered Rome to receive the* crown.
house of correction has been built the huge low-browed arches of upon its site ; but in a brewery its lower story, hard by may be seen some of
CHAPTER XL
THE EMPEROKS IN ITALY : PREDBIIICK BAEBAEOSSA.
Chap. XI. The reign of Frederick the First, better known under Frederick his Italian surname Barbarossa, is the most brilliant ofHohen- i^ ^^ annals of the Empire. Its territory had been 1 1 52-1 189. Wider under Charles, its strength perhaps greater under Henry III, but it never appeared in such per- vading vivid activity, never shone with such lustre of chivalry, as under the prince whom his countrymen have taken to be one of their national heroes, and who is still, as the half-mythic type of Teutonic cha- racter, honoured by picture and statue, in song and in legend, through the breadth of the German lands. The reverential fondness of his annalists, and the whole tenour of his life, goes far to justify this ad- miration, and makes it probable that nobler motives were joined with personal ambition in urging him to assert so haughtily and carry out so harshly those imperial rights in which he had such unbounded con- fidence. Under his guidance the Transalpine power made its greatest effort to subdue the two antagonists which then threatened and were fated in the end to destroy it — Italian nationality and the Papacy. Mia tela- Even before Gregory VII^s time it might have Popedom. ^^^^ predicted that two such potentates as the
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE, 185
Emperor and the Pope, closely bound together, yet Chap. XI. each with pretensions wide and undefined, must ere long come into collision. The boldness of that great pontiff in enforcing, the unflinching firmness of his successors in maintaining, the supremacy of clerical authority, inspired their supporters with a zeal and courage which more than compensated the advan- tages of the Emperor in defending rights he had long enjoyed. On both sides the hatred was soon very bitter. But even had men^s passions permitted a reconciliation, it would have been found difiicult to bring into harmony adverse principles, each ir- resistible, mutually destructive. As the spiritual power, in itself purer, since exercised over the soul and directed to the highest of all ends, eternal felicity, was entitled to the obedience of all, laymen as well as clergy ; so the spiritual person, to whom, according to the views then entertained, there had been imparted by ordination a mysterious sanctity, could not without sin be subject to the lay magis- trate, be installed by him in office, be judged in his court, and render to him any compulsory service. Yet it was no less true that civil government was indispensable to the peace and advancement of so- ciety; and while it continued to subsist, another jurisdiction could not be suffered to interfere with its workings, nor one-half of the people be alto- gether removed from its control. Thus the Emperor and the Pope were forced into hostility, as champions of opposite systems, however fully each might admit the strength of his adversaries position, however
186 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. XI. bitterly he might bewail the violence of his own partisans. There had also arisen other causes of quarrel, less respectable but not less dangerous. The pontiff demanded and the monarch refused the lands which the Countess Matilda of Tuscany had bequeathed to the Holy See; the latter claiming them as feudal suzerain, the former eager by their means to carry out those schemes of temporal do- minion which Constantine's donation sanctioned, and Lothar's seeming renunciation of the sove- reignty of Rome had done much to encourage. As feudal superior of the Norman kings of Naples and Sicily, as protector of the towns and barons of North Italy who feared the German yoke, the suc- cessor of Peter wore already the air of an independent potentate. Contest No man was less likely than Frederick to submit
^^^^ to these encroachments. He was a sort of impe- rialist Hildebrand, strenuously proclaiming the im- mediate dependence of his office on God^s gift, and holding it every whit as sacred as his rivals. On his first journey to Rome, he refused to hold the Pope^s stirrup, as Lothar had done, till Pope Ha- drian the Fourth^s threat that he would withhold the crown enforced compliance. Complaints arising not long after on some other ground, the Pope exhorted Frederick by letter to shew himself worthy of the kindness of his mother the Roman Church, who had given him the imperial crown, and would con- fer on him, if dutiful, benefits still greater. This , word benefits — heneikia — understood in its usual
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE, 187
legal sense of ^^ fief/^ and taken in connexion with Chap. XI. the picture which had been set up at Rome to com- memorate Lothar^s homage, provoked angry shouts from the nobles assembled in diet at Besan9on ; and when the legate answered, "From whom, then, if not from our Lord the Pope, does your king hold the Empire ?^^ his life was not safe from their fury. On this occasion Frederick's vigour and the remon- strances of the Transalpine prelates obliged Hadrian to explain away the obnoxious word, and remove the picture. Soon after the quarrel was renewed by other causes, and came to centre itself* round the Pope^s demand that Rome should be left entirely to his government. Frederick, in reply, appeals to the civil law, and closes with the words, " Since by the ordination of God I both am called and am Emperor of the Romans, in nothing bu4; name shall I appear to be ruler if the control of the Roman city be wrested from my hands.^^ That such a claim should need assertion marks the change since Henry III; how much more that it could not be enforced. Hadrian^s tone rises into defiance; he mingles the threat of excommunication with references to the time when the Germans had not yet the Empire. What were the Franks till Zacharias welcomed Pipin ? What is the Teutonic king now till con- secrated at Rome by holy hands? The chair of Peter has given, and can withdraw its gifts*. The schism that followed Hadrian^s death pro-
«
* Quoted from Hahn^s Monvmentaf by Milman, Latin Christianity, iii. 312.
188 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. XI. duced a second and more momentous conflict.
With Pom ^^^^^^^> 3® head of Christendom, proposed to Alexander summon the bishops of Europe to a general coun- cil, over which he should preside, like Justinian or Heraclius. Quoting the favourite text of the two swords, ^^ On earth,'^ he continues, ^^ God has placed no more than two powers : above there is but one God, so here one Pope and one Emperor. The Divine Providence has specially appointed the Roman Empire as a remedy against continued schism ^/^ The plan failed ; and Frederick adopted the candidate whom his own faction had chosen, while the rival claimant, Alexander III, appealed, with a confidence which the issue justified, to the support of sound churchmen throughout Europe. The keen and long doubtful strife of twenty years that followed, while apparently a dispute between rival Popes, was in substance an effort by the secular monarch *to recover his command of the priesthood ; not less truly so than that contem- poraneous conflict of the English Henry II and St. Thomas of Canterbury, with which it was con- stantly involved. Unsupported, not all Alexander's genius and resolution could have saved him : by the aid of the Lombard cities, whose league he had counselled and hallowed, and of the fevers of Rome, by which the conquering German host was suddenly ^njiihilated, he won a triumph the more signal, that it was over a prince so wise and so
■
b Letter to the German bishops in Badewic ; Mur., S.B,!., t. vi. P- 833-
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. ' 189
^^ >
pious as Frederick. At Venice, who, inaccessible Ohap. XI.
by her position, maintained a sedulous neutrality, claiming to be independent of the Empire, yet seldom led into war by sympathy with the Popes, the two powers whose strife had roused all Europe were induced to meet by the mediation of the doge '7 Sebastian Ziani. Three slabs of red marble in the porch of St. Mark^s point out the spot where Frederick knelt in sudden awe, and the Pope with tears of joy raised him, and gave the kiss of peace. A later legend, to which poetry and painting have given an undeserved currency, tells how the pontiff set his foot on the neck of the prostrate king> with the words, ^^ The lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet c.^^ It needed not this exaggera- tion to enhance the significance of that scene, even more full of meaning for the future than it was solemn and affecting to the Venetian crowd that thronged the church and the piazza. For it was the renunciation by the mightiest prince of his time of the project to which his life had been devoted : it was the abandonment by the secular power of a contest in which it had twice been van- quished, and which it could not renew under more favourable conditions''.
Authority maintained so long against the suc- cessor of Peter would be far from indulgent to rebellious subjects. For it was in this light that the Lombard cities appeared to a monarch bent on
c Psalm xci. * Cf . Von Eanke, German History in the
Eeformation Period ; Introduction.
190 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
•Chap. XJ. reviving all the rights his predecessors had enjoyed : Revival of ^^Jj all that the law of ancient Rome gave her ^^\hR^mi ^^^^^^^ ruler. It would be wrong to speak of a law. re-discovery of the civil law. That system had never
* perished from Gaul and Italy, had been t^p ground-
work of some codes, and the whole substance, modi- fied only by the changes in society, of many others. The Church excepted, no agent did so much to keep alive the memory of Roman institutions. The twelfth century now beheld the study cultivated with a surprising increase of knowledge and ardour, expended chiefly upon the Pandects. First in Italy and the schools of the South, then in Paris and Oxford, they were expounded, commented on, ex- tolled as the perfection of human wisdom; the sole, true, and eternal law. Vast as has been the labour and thought expended from that time to this in the elucidation of the civil law, we are assured by com- petent authorities, that in subtlety, in sagacity, in all those branches of learning which can subsist without help from historical criticism, these so-called Glossatores have been seldom equalled and never surpassed by their successors. The teachers of the canon law, who had not as yet become the rivals of the civilian, and were accustomed to recur to his books where their own were silent, spread through Europe the fame and influence of the Roman juris- prudence ; while its own professors were led both by their feeUng and their interest to give to all its maxims the greatest weight and the fullest appli- cation. Men just emerging from barbarism, with
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 191
minds unaccustomed to create and blindly submis- Chap. XI.* sive to authority, viewed written texts with an awe to us incomprehensible. All that the most servile jurists of Rome had ever ascribed to their despotic princes was directly transferred to the Csesarean majesty who inherited their name. He was ^^ Lord of the world,^^ absolute master of the lives and pro- perty of all his subjects, that is, of all men ; the sole fountain of legislation, the embodiment of right and justice. These doctrines, which the great Bo- lognese jurists, Bulgarus, Martinus, Hugolinus, and others who constantly surrounded Frederick, taught and applied, as matter of course, to a Teutonic, a feudal king, were by the rest of the world not denied, were accepted in fervent faith by his German and Italian partisans. "To the Emperor belongs the protection of the whole world,^^ says bishop Otto of Freysing. "The Emperor is a living law upon earthe/^ To Frederick, at Roncaglia, the archbishop of Milan speaks for the assembled magnates of Lom- bardy : " Do and ordain whatsoever thou wilt, thy will is law j as it is written, ^ Quicquid principi >( placuit legis habet vigorem, cum populus ei et in eum omne suum imperium et potestatem conces- serit^.^^^ The Hohenstaufen himself was not slow to accept these magnificent ascriptions of dignity, and though modestly professing his wish to govern according to law rather than override the law, was doubtless roused by them to a more vehement asser-
® Document of 1230, quoted ' Speech of archbishop of by "Von Baumer, v. p. 81, Milan, in Kadewic ; Mur. vi.
192 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. XI. tion of a prerogative so hallowed by age and by what seemed a divine ordinance.
Frederick That assertion was most loudly called for in Italy. ay. rjijjg Emperors might appear to consider it a con- quered country without privileges to be respected, for they did not summon its princes to the German diets, and overawed its own assemblies at Pavia or Roncaglia by the Transalpine host that followed them. Its crown, too, was theirs whenever they crossed the Alps to claim it, while the elections on the banks of the Rhine might be adorned but could not be influenced by the presence of barons from the Southern kingdom %, In practice, however, the ina- perial power stood lower in Italy than in GtTmany,! for it had been from the first intermittent, depending! on the personal vigour and present armed support/ of each invader. The theoretic sovereignty of the Emperor-king was nowise disputed : in the cities toll i and tax were of right his : he could issue edicts at / the Diet, and require the tenants in chief to appear I with their vassals. But the revival of a control \ never exercised since Henry IV^s time, was felt as ' an intolerable hardship by the great Lombard cities, k proud of riches and population equal to that of the duchies of Germany or the kingdoms of the North, and accustomed for more than a century to a tur- 1^ bulent independence. For republicanism and popular freedom Frederick had little sympathy. At Rome the fervent Arnold of Brescia had repeated, but with
8 Frederick's election (at Frankfort) was made " non sine quibns- dam Italiae baronibus."* — Otto Fris. i. Bat this was the exception.
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE, 193
far different thoughts and hopes, the part of Ores- Chap. XI. centius^^, The city had thrown off the yoke of its ^^^^^^^^ bishop, and a commonwealth under consuls dbnA. Arnold of senate professed to emulate the spirit while it re- newed the forms of the primitive republic. Its leaders had written to Conrad III^ asking him to help them to restore the Empire to its position under Constantine and Justinian; but the German, warned by St. Bernard, had preferred the friendship of the Pope, Pilled with a vain conceit of their own importance, they repeated their offers to Frederick when he sought the crown from Hadrian the Fourth. A deputation, after dwelling in highflown language on the dignity of the Roman people, and their kindness in bestowing the sceptre on him, a Swabian and a stranger, proceeded, in a manner hardly con-» sistent, to demand a largess ere he should enter the city. Frederick's anger did not hear them to the end: ^'Is this your Roman wisdom? Who are ye that usurp the name of Roman dignities? Your honours and your authority are yours no longer ; with us are consuls, senate, soldiers. It was not you who chose us, but Charles and Otto that rescued you from the Greek and the Lom- bard, and conquered by their own might the im- perial crown. That Frankish might is still the
*» " Nil juris in hac re
Pontifici suinmo, modicum concedere regi Suadebat populo.**
Gunther Ligurimis.
* '' Senatus Populusque Bomanus urbis et orbis totius domino Conrado.''
O
194 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. XI. same : wrench, if you can, the club from Hercules. It is not for the people to give laws to the prince, but to obey his mandate J^/' This was Frederick's version of the ^^Translation of the Empire l^'
ThtLom- He who had been so stem to his own capital ' was not likely to deal more gently with the rebels of Milan and Tortona. In the contest by which Frederick is chiefly known to history, he is com- monly painted as the foreign tyrant, the forerunner of the Austrian oppressor m, crushing under the hoofs of his cavalry the home of freedom and industry. Such a view is unjust to a great man and his cause. To the despot liberty is always licence : yet Frederick was the advocate of admitted claims, the aggressions of Milan threatened her neighbours, the refusal, where no actual oppression was alleged, to admit his officers and allow his regalian rights, seemed a wanton breach of oaths and engagements, treason against God no less than himself ». Nevertheless our sympathy must go with the cities, in whose victory we recognize the triumph of freedom and civilization^ Their resistance was at first probably a mere aversion to unused control, and to the enforce- ment of imposts less offi^nsive in former days than
k Otto of Freysing in Mur., » See the liret note to Shel-
S. H. I. *'Extorquete clavam ley''B ffellas. Sismondi is mainly
Herculi." answerable for this conception of
1 Later in his reign, Frederick Barbarossa's position, condescended to negotiate with " They say rebellionsly, says
these Koman magistrates against Frederick, ** Nolmnus hunc reg-
a hostile Pope, and entered into nare super nos ... at nos ma-
a sort of treaty by which they luimus honestam mortem quam
were declared exempt from au ut," &c. — Letter in PertsL jurisdiction but his own.
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 195
•
now^ and by long dereliction apparently obsolete ®.vChap. Xl. Bepubliean principles were not avowed, nor Italian nationality appealed to. But the progress of the conflict developed new motives and feelings, and gave them clearer notions of what they fought for. As the Emperor's antagonist, the Pope was their natural ally: he blessed their arms, and called on the barons of Bomagna and Tuscany for aid; he made ^' The Church'^ ere long their watchword, and helped them to conclude that league of mutual sup- port by means whereof the party of the Italian Guelfs was formed. Another cry, too, began to be heard, hM'dly less inspiriting than the last, the cry of freedom and municipal self-government — freedom little understood and terribly abused, self-govern- ment which the cities who claimed it for them- selves refused to their subject allies, yet both of them, through their divine power of stimulating eflFort and quickening sympathy, as much nobler than the harsh and sterile system of a feudal mon- archy as was the citizen of republican Athens to the slavish Asiatic or the brutal Macedonian. Nor was the fact that Italians were resisting a Trans- alpine invader without its effect; there was as yet no distinct national feeling, for half Lom- bardy, towns as weU as rural nobles, fought under
o "De tributo CseBaris nemo cogitabat ;
Omnes erant Csesares, nemo censum dabat ; Civitas Ambrosii, velut Troja, stabat, Deos parum, homines minus formidabat.
Poems on the Emperor Frederick of Hohenstaufen, published by Grimm.
O %
196 THE HOLT RO^AN EMPIRE.
CaAP. XI. Frederick ; but events made the cause of liberty always more clearly the cause of patriotism, and increased that fear and hate of the Tedescan for which Italy has had such bitter justification. TaaparaTy. The Emperor was for a time successful : Tortona 'pj^^r^_ was taken: Milan razed to the ground, her name apparently lost : greater obstacles had been over- come, and a fuller authority was now, exercised than in the days of the Ottos or the Henrys, The glories of the first Franldsh conqueror were triumphantly recalled, and Frederick was compared by his ad- mirei's to the hero whose canonization he had pro- cured, and whom he strove in all things to imitateP. " He was esteemed," says one, " second only to Charles in piety and justice." "We ordain this," says a decree : " XJt ad Caroli imitationem jus ecele- siarum statum reipublicse et legum integritatem per totum imperium nostrum servaremus ''." But the hold the name of Charles had on the minds of the people, and the way in which he had become, so to speak, an eponym of Empire, has better wit- nesses than grave doeumente. A rhyming poet
" Quanta ut potentia vet laus Friderici Cnm sit patena omnibua, non eat opnB dici ; Qui rebellea lancea fodieua ultrici BsprffiBantat Karolum dextera vicWici."
s of gratulatioiis
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE, 107
over the re-establishment of order by the destruction Chap. XL of the dens of unruly burghers.
This fair sky was soon clouded. Prom her quench- Victwry of less ashes uprose Milan j Cremona, scorning old j^^^' jealousies, helped to rebuild what she had destroyed, and the confederates, committed to an all but hope- less strife, clung faithfully together till on the field of Legnano the Empire^s bsuiner went down before the carroccio « of the free city. Times were changed since Aistulf and Desiderius trembled at the distant tramp of the Frankish hosts. A new nation had arisen, slowly reared through suffering into strength, now at last by heroic deeds conscious of itself. The power of Charles had overleaped boundaries of nature and language that were too strong for his successor, and that grew henceforth ever firmer, till they made the Empire itself a delusive name, Fredeiick^ though harsh in war, and now balked of his most cherished hopes, could honestly accept a state of things it -was beyond his power to change: he signedjshfifixfully
and kept dutifully the peace of Constance, which left
•*• "~' ' -^ ,' II ■ *
him littIfii.lM^4kiituJaLJB3ipremacy^ towijs^
At home no preceding Emperor had been so much Frederick respected and so generally prosperous. Umtmg lUjj.^^ his person the Saxon and Swabian famiUes, he healed the long feud of Welf and Waiblingen : his prelates were faithful to him, even against Rome : no tur- bulent rebel disturbed the public peace. Germany
" The carroccio was a waggon wliich senred the Ijomhards for with ft flagstaff planted on it, a rallying-point m battle.
198 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. XI. was proud of a hero who maintained her dignity so well abroad^ and he crowned a glorious life with a happy deaths leading the van of Christian chivalry against the Mussulman. Frederick^ the greatest of the Crusaders^ is the noblest type of mediseval cha- racter in many of its shadows, in all its lights.
Legal in form, in practice sometimes almost abso- lute, the government of Germany was, like that of other feudal kingdoms, restrained chiefly by the diffi- culty of coercing refractory vassals. All 'depended on the monarches character, and one so vigorous and popular as Frederick could generally lead the ma- jority with him and terrify the rest. A false uxt- pression of the real strength of his prerogative might be formed £rom the readiness with which he was obeyed. He repaired the finances of the kingdom,, controlled the dukes, introduced a more splendid ceremonial, endeavoured to exalt the central power by multiplying the nobles of the second rank, after- wards the 'college of princes,^ and by trying to substitute the civil law and Lombard feudal code for the old Teutonic customs, different in every province. If not successful in this project, he fared better with The Qer- another. Since Henry the Fowler's day towns had ?»o»ci*e«. ijggj^ growing up through Southern and Western
Germany, especially where rivers offered facilities for trade. Cologne, Treves, Mentz, Worms, Speyer, Niimberg, Ulm, Regensburg, Augsburg, were al- ready considerable cities, not afraid to beard their lord or their bishop, and promising before long to counterbalance the power of the territorial oligarchy.
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 199
P(^cy or instinct led Frederick to attach them to the Chap. XI. throne, enfranchising many, granting, with municipal institutions, an independent jurisdiction, conferring various exemptions and privileges ; while receiving in turn their good-will and loyal aid, in money always, in men when need should come. His immediate suc- cessors trode in his steps, and thus there arose in the state a third order, the firmest bulwark, had it been rightly used, of imperial authority ; an order whose members, the Free Cities, were through many ages the centres of German intellect and freedom, the only haven from the storms of civil war, the surest hope of future peace and union. In them national con- gresses to this day sometimes meet : from them aspiring spirits strive to diflPiise those ideas of Ger- manic unity and self-government, which they alone have kept alive. Out of so many flourishing com- monwealths, four * have been spared by foreign con- querors and faithless princes. To the primitive order of German freemen, scarcely existing out of the towns, except in Swabia and Switzerland, Frederick fturther commended himself by admitting them to knighthood, by restraining the licence of the nobles, imposing a public peace, making justice in every way more accessible and impartial. To the south- west of the green plain that girdles in the rock of Salzburg, the gigantic mass of the Untersberg frowns over the road which winds up a long defile to the glen and lake of Berchtesgaden, There, far up
^ Ltlbeck, Hamburg, Bremen, and Frankfort.
200 tHE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. XI. among its limestone crags, in a spot scarcely ac- cessible to human foot, the peasants of the valley point out to the traveller the black mouth of a cavern, and tell him that within Barbarossa lies amid his knights in an enchanted sleep™, waiting the hour when the ravens shall cease to hover round the peak, and the pear-tree blossom in the valley, to descend with his Crusaders and bring back to Germany th^ golden age of peace and strength and unity. Often in the evil days that followed the fell of Frederick's house, often when tyranny seemed unendurable and anarchy endless, men thought on that cavern, and sighed for the day when the long sleep of the just Emperor should be broken, and his shield be hung aloft again as of old in the camp's midst, a sign of help to the poor and the oppressed.
" The legend is one which appears under various forms in many countries.
CHAPTER XII.
IMPERIAL TITLES AND PRETENSIONS.
The era of the Hohenstaufen is perhaps the fittest Chap. XII. point at which to turn aside from the narrative history of the Empire to speak shortly of the legal position which it professed to hold to the rest of Europe^ as well as of certain duties and observances which throw a light upon the system it embodied. This is not indeed the era of its greatest power t that was already past. Nor is it conspicuously the era when its ideal dignity stood highest: for that remained scarcely impaired till three centuries had passed away. But it was under the Hohenstaufen> owing partly to the splendid abilities of the princes of that famous line, partly to the suddenly-gained ascendancy of the Roman law, that the actual power and the theoretical influence of the Empire most fully coincided. There can therefore be no better opportuniiy for noticing the titles and •claims by which it announced itself the representative of Rome^s universal dominion, and for collecting the various instances in which they were more or less admitted by the other states of Europe.
The territories over which Barbarossa would have
202 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap.XII. declared his jurisdiction to extend may be classed under four heads : —
First, the German lands, in which, and in which alone, the Emperor was, up till the death of Frederick the Second, effective sovereign.
Second, the non-German districts of the Holy Empire, where the Emperor was acknowledged as sble monarch, but in practice little regarded.
Third, certain outlying countries, owing allegiance to the Empire, but governed by kings of their own.
Fourth, the other states of Europe, whose rulers, while in most cases admitting the superior rank of the Emperor, were virtually independent of him. Limitto}^ Thus within the actual boundaries of the Holy ^ ^^' Empire were included only districts coming under the first and second of the above classes, i.e. Ger- many, the northern half of Italy, and the kingdom of Burgundy or Aries, (that is to say, Provence, Dauphine, the Free County of Burgundy (Franche Comt^, and Western Switzerland). Lorraine, Alsace, and a portion of Flanders were of course parts of Germany. To the north-east, Bohemia and the Slavic principalities in Mecklenburg and Pomerania were as yet not integral parts of its body, but rather dependent outliers. Beyond the March of Brandenbtfrg, from the Oder to the Vistula, dwelt pagan Lithuanians or Prussians*, free till the esta- blishment among them of the Teutonic knights. Hungary. Hungary had owed a doubtful allegiance since the
• t(
Pruzzi/' says the biogra- Deus est venter et avaritia iuncta pher of St. Adalbert, ** quorum cum morte.** — M, 0, ff, t. iv.
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 203
days of Otto I. Gregory VII had claimed it as acHAP.XII. fief of the Holy See ; Frederick wished to reduce it completely to subjection, but could not overcome the reluctance of his nobles. After Frederick II, by whom it was recovered from the Mongol hordes, no imperial claims were made for so many years that at last they became obsolete, and were confessed to be so by the Constitution of Augsburg, a.d. 1566^.
Under duke Misico, Poland had submitted to Otto Pdand: the Great, and continued, with occasional revolts, to obey the Empire, till the Great Interregnum, as it is called, in 1254. Its duke was present at the election of Richard, a.d. 12^58. Thereafter Primislas called himself king, in token of emancipation, and the country became independent, though some of its provinces were long afterwards reunited to the Ger- man state. Silesia, originally Polish, was attached to Bohemia by Charles IV, Posen and Galicia were seized by Prussia and Austria, a.d. 1772. Down to her partition in that year, the constitution of Poland remained a copy of that which had existed in the German kingdom in the twelfth century®.
Lewis the Pious had received the homage of the DmmarJc. Danish king Harold, on his baptism at Mentz, a.d. 826 'j Otto^s victories over Harold Blue Tooth made the country regularly subject, and added the March
b Conring, De Fintbus Im- The position of the archdukes of
perH. It is hardly necessary to Austria as kings of Hungary had
observe that the connection of nothing to do legally with the
Hungary with the Hapsburgs is fact that many of them were also
of comparatively recent origin,- chosen £mperor8.
and of a purely dynastic nature. ^ Pfeffel, Abr^gd Chronolpffiqm»
204
TBE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. XII. of Schleswig to the immediate territory of the Em- pire : but the boundary soon receded to the Eyder, on whose banks might be seen the inscription, —
'' Eidora Komani terminus imperii."
King Peter® attended at Frederick I's coronation, to do homage, and receive from the Emperor, as suze- rain, his own crown. Since the Intetregnum Den- mark has been always free^.
Fraiwe. Otto the Great was the last Emperor whose suze- rainty the French kings had admitted; nor were Henry VI and Otto IV successful in their attempts to revive it. Boniface VIII, in his quarrel with Philip the Fair, offered the throne which he had pronounced vacant to Albert I, but the wary Haps- burg declined the dangerous prize. The precedence, however, which the Germans continued to assert, irritated Gallic pride, and led to more than one contest, Blondel denies the Empire any claim to the Roman name; and in a. d. 1648 the French envoys at Miinster refused for some time to admit what no other European state disputed. Till recent times the title of the Archbishop of Treves, ^'Archi- cancellarius per Galliam atque regnum Arelatense,^^ preserved the memory of an obsolete supremacy which the constant aggressions of France might seem to have reversed.
Sweden. No reliance can be placed on the author who tells us that Sweden was granted by Frederick I to
^ Letter of Frederick I to Otto of Freising, prefixed to the latter's History. This king is also called Sweyn. <* See Append., Note B.
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 205
Waldemax the Dane®; the fact is improbable, and Chap. XIL we do not hear that such pretensions were ever put forth before or affcer.
Nor does it appear that authority was ever exer- Spam. cised by any Emperor in Spain. Nevertheless the choice of Alfonso X by a section of the German electors, in a. d. 1:158, may be construed to imply that the Spanish kings were members of the Empire. And when, a.d. 1053, Ferdinand the Great of Castile had, in the pride of his victories over the Moors, assumed the title of ^' Hispanise Imperator,^' the remonstrance of Henry III declared the rights of Eiome over her Western provijaces indelible, and the Spaniard, though protesting his independence, was forced to resign the usurped dignity^.
No act of sovereignty is recorded to have been England. done by any of the Emperors in England, though as heirs of Rome they might be thought to have better rights over it than over Poland or Denmark. There was, however, a vague notion that the English, like other kingdoms, must depend on the Empire : a notion which appears in Conrad Ill's letter to John of Constantinople^; and which was countenanced by the submissive tone in which Frederick I was addressed by the Plantagenet Henry II'*. English indepen-
^ AlbertuB Stadensis apud Con- the Moors, and thus acquired by
ringimn, Dt Finibus Imperii. occupatio, ought not to be subject
' Arthur Duck, De Utu et Au- to the Emperors.
thoritate Iwria Oioilis, quotes the « Letter in Otto Fris. i. : "No-
yiew of some among the older bis submittuntur Francia et Hi*
jurists, that Spain having been, spania, Anglia et Dania."
as far as the Komans were con- ^ Letter in Badewio says,
cemed, a res derelicta, recovered " Begnum nostrum vobis expo*
by the ^Spaniards themselves from nimus, , , . . Yobis imperandi
206 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE,
Chap. XII. dence was still more compromised in the next reign, when Richard I, according to Hoveden, '^ Consilio matris suae deposuit se de regno AngliaB et tradidit illud imperatori (Henrico VI*°) sicut universorum domino/' But as Richard was at the same time invested with the kingdom of Aries by Henry VI, his homage may have been for that fief only; and it was probably in that capacity that he voted, as a prince of the Empire, at the election of Frederick II. The case finds a parallel in the claims of Eng- land over the Scottish king, doubtful, to say the least, as regards the domestic realm of the latter, certain as regards Cumbria, which he had long held from the Southern crown ^ But Germany had no Edward I. Henry VI is said to have at his death released Richard from this submission (this too may be compared with Richard's release to the Scottish William the Lion), and Edward II declared, '^reg- num Anglise ab omni subjectione imperiali esse liber- rimum ^" Yet the idea survived : the Emperor Lewis the Bavarian, when he named Edward III his vicar in the great French war, demanded, though in vain, that the English monarch should kiss his feet^ Sigismund™, visiting Henry V at London,
cedat auctoritas, nobis non de- ^ Selden^ Titles of Sonour,
erit voluntas obsequendi." part i. chap. ii.
* The alleged instances of ho- ' Edward refused .upon the
mage by the Scots to the Saxon ground that he was " rex in-
and early Norman kings are unctus.^^
almost all complicated in some ^^ Sigismund had shortly before
such way. They had once held given great offence in France by
also the earldom of Huntingdon dubbing knights. from the English crown.
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 207
before the meeting of the council of Constance^ was Chap. XII. met by the duke of Gloucester^ who^ riding into the water to the ship where the Emperor sat^ required him, at the sword^s point, to declare that he did not come purposing to infringe on the king's authority in the realm of England **. One curious pretension of the imperial crown called forth many protests. It was declared by civilians and canonists that no public notary could have any standing, or attach any legality to the documents he drew, unless he had received his diploma from the Emperor or the Pope. A strenuous denial of a doctrine so injurious was issued by the parliament of Scotland under James III **.
The kingdom of Naples and Sicily, although ot Naples. course claimed as a part of the Empire, was under the Norman dynasty (a.d. 1060-1189) not merely independent, but the most dangerous enemy of the German power in Italy. Henry VI, the son and successor of Barbarossa, obtained possession of it by marrying Constantia the last heiress of the Norman dynasty. But both he and Frederick II treated it as a separate patrimonial state, instead of incorpo- rating it with their more northerly dominions. After the death of Conradin, the last of the Hohenstaufen, it passed away first to an Angevin, then to an Aragonese dynasty, continuing under both to main- tain itself independent of the Empire, nor ever again.
n Sigismund answered, " Nihil <> Selden, Titles of Eonour, se contra superioritatem regis part i. chap. iL prsetexere."
208 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE,
Chap. xn. except under Charles V, united to the Germanic crown. Venice. One spot in Italy there was whose singular felicity of situation enabled her through long centuries of ob- scurity and weaJmess, slowly ripening into strength, to maintain her freedom unstained by any submission to the Frankish and Germanic Emperors. Venice glories in deducing her origin from the fugitives who escaped from Aquileia in the days of Attila : it is at least probable that her population never received an intermixture of Teutonic settlers, and continued during the ages of Lombard and Frankish rule in Italy to regard the Byzantine sovereigns as the re- presentatives of their ancient masters. In the tenth century, when summoned to submit by Otto, they had said, ^^ We wish to be the servants of the Emperors of the Romans'' (the Constantinopolitan), and though they overthrew this very Eastern throne in a.d. 1204^ the pretext had served its turn, and had aided them in defying or evading the demands of obedience made by the Teutonic princes. Alone of all the Italian republics, Venice never, down to her extinc- tion by Era e and Austria in a.d. 1796, recognized within her walls any secular authority save her own. The East. The kings of Cyprus and Armenia sent to Henrj VI to confess themselves his vassals and ask his help Over remote Eastern lands, where Frankish foot ha never trod, Frederick Barbarossa asserted the inde structible rights of Rome, mistress of the world. A letter to Saladin, amusing from its absolute identifi cation of his own Empire with that which had sen
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 209
Crassus to perish in Farthia^ and had blushed to see Chap. XII. Mark Antony ^^consulem |;iostrum^^ at the feet of Cleopatra, is preserved by Hoveden : it bids the Soldan withdraw at once from the dominions of Bome^ else will she, with her new Teutonic de- fenders, of whom a pompous list follows, drive him from them with all her ancient might.
Unwilling as were the great kingdoms of Western ponstanH' Europe to admit the territorial supremacy of the| ^*' Emperor, the proudest among them never refused to recognize his precedence and address him in a tone of respectful deference. Very different was the atti- tude of the Byzantine princes, who denied his claim to be an Emperor at all. The separate existence of] the Eastern Church and Empire was not only, as has been said above, a blemish in the title of the Teu- tonic sovereigns ; it was a continuing and successful protest against the whole system of an Empire Church of Christendom, centeriug in Rome, ruled by the successor of Peter and the successor of Au- gustus. Instead of the one Pope and one Emperor whom mediaeval theory presented as the sole earthly representatives of the invisible head oi Jhe Church, the world saw itself distracted by the interminable feud of rivals, each of whom had much to allege on his behalf. It was easy for the Latins to call the Easterns schis- ' matics and their Emperor an usurper, but practically it was impossible to dethrone him or reduce them to obedience : while even in controversy no one could treat the pretensions of communities, who had been the first to embrace Christianity and retained so
p
210 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. XII. many of its most ancient forms, with the contempt which would have been, felt for any Western sec- taries. Seriously, however, as the hostile position of the Greeks seems to us to aflfect the claims of the Teutonic Empire, calling in question its legi- timacy and marring its pretended universality, those who lived at the time seem to have troubled themselves little about jt," En3ing TEemselves in practic~*seldom confronted by the difficulties it raised. The great mass of the people ^new of the Greeks not even by name; of those who did, the most thought of them only as perverse rebels, Samaritans who refused to worship at Jerusalem, and were little better than infidels. The few eccle- siastics of superior knowledge and insight had their minds preoccupied by the established theory, and accepted it with too intense a belief to sufier any- thing else to come into collision with it: they do not seem to have even apprehended all that was Rivalry involved in this one defect. Nevertheless, the Eastern 1^ the two Church was then, as she is to this day, a thorn in the side orthe Tapacy ;""and~the Eastern Emperors, so far from uniting for the good of Christendom with their Western brethren, felt towards them a bitteTthbugh nbT^unnaturaTjeglousy, lost no oppor- tunity of intriguing for their evil, and never ceased to deny their right to the imperial name. The coro- nation of Charles was in their eyes an act of unhol} rebellion; his successors were barbarian intruders igTiorant of the laws and usages of the ancient state ftnd with no claim to the Boman name except tha
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 211
which the favour of an insolent pontiff might confer. chap.XII. The Greeks had themselves long since ceased to use the Latin tongue, and were indeed become more than half Orientals in character and manners. But they still continued to call themselves Romans, and pre- served most of the titles and ceremonies which had existed in the time of Constantine or Justinian. They were weak, although by no means so weak as modem historians have been till lately wont to paint them, and the weaker they grew the higher rose their conceit, and the more did they plume them- selves upon the uninterrupted legitimacy of their crown, and the ceremonial splendour wherewith cus- tom had surrounded its wearer. It gratified their spite to pervert insultingly the titles of the Frankish princes. Basil the Macedonian reproached Lewis II with presuming to use the name of ^Basileus,' to which Lewis retorted that he was as good an emperor as Basil himself, but that, anyhow, Basileus was only the Greek for rex, and need not mean ^Emperor' at all. Nicephorus would not call Otto I anything but '^ King of the Lombards V^ Conrad III was addressed by Calo- Johannes as ^^ amice imperii mei Rex^ :" Isaac Angelus had the impudence to style Frederick I " chief prince of Alemannia'.^' The great Emperor,
p Liutprand, Legatio Constan- rator Bomanoram, Angelus totius tinopoUtana. Nicepborua says, orbis, heres corona? magni Con-
Yis majus scandalum quam stantuii, dilecto fratri imperii sui,
qnod se imperatorem vocat." mazimo principi Alemannise."
1 Otto of Freising, i. Frederick answered, " Se post
' " Isaacbins a Deo constitutus Deum esse dominum dominan-
Imperator, sacratissimns, excel- tium.'* Quoted by Yon Baumer,
lentissimiis; potentissimus^ jnode- i. p. 455, from Expeditio Adatica,
P2
212 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap.XII. half-resentful, half-contemptuous, told the envoys that he was ^^ Romanorum imperator,^^ and bade their master call himself " Romaniorum^^ from his Thracian province. Though these ebullitions were the most conclusive proof of their weakness, the Byzantine rulers sometimes planned the recovery of their former capital, and seemed not unlikely to succeed under the leadership of the conquering Ma- nuel Comnenus. He invited Alexander III, then in the heat of his strife with Frederick, to return to the embrace of his rightful sovereign, but the prudent pontiff and his synod courteously declined'*. The Greeks were, however, too unstable and too much alienated from Latin feeling to have held Rome, could they even have seduced her allegiance. A few years later they were themselves the victims of the French and Venetian crusaders.
JHffmties Though Otto the Great and his successors had dropped all titles save their highest (the tedious lists of imperial dignities happily existed not yet), they did not therefore endeavour to imite their several kingdoms, but continued to go through four distinct coronations at the four capitals of their Empire*. These are concisely given in the verses of Godfrey of Viterbo, a notary of Frederick's house- hold« :—
t(
Primus Aquisgrani locus est, post lisec Arelati, Inde Modoetise regali sede locari Post solet Italise summa corona dari : Caesar Romano cum vult diademate fungi Debet apostolicis manibus reverenter inungi."
8 BaroniuB, ad ann. « Godefr. Yiterh.t Pcmtkeon, in
^ See Appendix, Note C. Mur., S.K L, torn, vii.
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 213
By the crowning at Aachen^ the old Frankish capital^ Chap. XII. the monarch became '^king;^^ formerly '^king of the The four Franks/' or> '' king of the Eastern Pranks /' now, croroM. since Henry IFs time, " king of the Romans, always Augustus/' At Monza, more rarely at Milan, he became king of Italy, or of the Lombards* ; at Bome he received the double crown of the Roman Empire, '' double,'' says Godfrey, as ^' urbis et orbis :" —
ft
Hoc quicunqiie tenet, summiis in orbe sedet ;"
though others hold that, uniting the mitre to the crown, it typifies spiritual as well as secular autho- rity. The crown of Burgundy y or Aries, first gained by Conrad II, was a much less splendid matter, and carried with it little effective pow:er. Most Em- perors never assumed it at all, Frederick I not till late in life, when an interval of leisure left him nothing better to do. These four crowns* furnish matter of endless discussion to the old writers : they tell us that the Roman was golden, the German silver, the Italian iron, the metal corresponding to the dignity of each realm*. Others say that that
» Donniges, DevJtaches Stoats- Frankish), which they say be- rechtf thinks that the crown of longed to Regensburg. — Mar- Italy, neglected by the Ottos, quardus Freherus. and taken by Henry II, was a • " Dy erste ist tho Aken : dar recognition of the separate na- kronet men mit derYseren Krone, tionality of Italy. But Otto I so is he Konig over alle Dlidesche was crowned king of Italy, and Ryke. Dy andere tho Meylan, Muratori {Ant. It. Dissert, iii.) de is Sulvem, so is he Here der believes that Otto II and Otto Walen. Dy drudde is tho Rome ; III were likewise. dy is guldin, so is he Keyser over y See Appendix. Note A. alle dy Werlt." — Gloss to the « Some suid a fifth crown, of Sachaenspiegd, quoted by Pfef- Germany (making that of Aachen finger. Similarly Peter de Andlo.
/
214 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chaf.XII. of Aachen is iron, and the Italian silver, and give elaborate reasons why it should be so^. There seems to be no doubt that the allegory created the fact, and that all three crowns were of gold, though in that of Italy there is inserted a piece of iron, a nail, it was believed, of the true Cross. Meaning Why, it may well be* asked, seeing that the Roman of the four Q.j.Qygrj^ made the Emperor ruler of the whole habitable
coronations* *
globe, was it thought necessary for him to add to it minor dignities which might be supposed to have been abeady included in it? The reason seems to be that the imperial oflSce was conceived of as some- thing different in kind from the regal, and as cariy- ing with it not the immediate government of any- particular kingdom, but a general suzerainty over and right of controlling all. Of this a pertinent illustration is afforded by an anecdote told of Fre- derick Barbarossa. Happening once to inquire of the famous jurists who surrounded him whether it was really true that he was " lord of the world,^' one of them simply assented, another, Bulgarus, answered " Not as respects ownership. ^^ In this dictum, which is evidently conformable to the philo- sophical theory of the Empire, we have a pointed distinction drawn between feudal sovereignty, which supposes the prince original owner of the soil of his whole kingdom, and imperial sovereignty, which is
*> Cf. Gewoldxis, De- S^ttemvir fore is, of copper or bronze, making
ratu imperii Bomcmi. One would the series complete, like the four
> expect some ingenious ailegorizer ages of men in Hesiod. But I
to have discovered that the crown have not been able to find any
of Burgundy must be, and there- such*
' TEE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 215
irrespective of place, and exercised not over things Chap.XII. but over men, as God's rational creatures. But the Emperor, as has been said already, was also the East Frankish king, uniting in himself, to use the legal phrase, two wholly distinct ^^ persons,^' and hence he might acquire more direct and practically useful rights over a portion of his dominions by being crowned king of that portion, just as a feudal monarch was often duke or count of lordships whereof he was already feudal superior; or, to take a better illus- tration, just as a bishop may hold livings in his own diocese. That the Emperors, while continuing to be crowned at Milan and Aachen, did not call them- selves kings of the Lombards and of the Franks, was probably merely because these titles seemed in- significant compared to that of Roman Emperor.
In this supreme title, as has been said, all lesser ''Emperw" honours were blent and lost, but custom or prejudice ^^^J^*"*^'*'^ forbade the German king to assume it till actually Bomcm crowned at Rome by the Pope*^. Matters of phrase and title are never unimportant, least of all in an age ignorant and superstitiously antiquarian : and this restriction had the most important consequences. * The first barbarian kings had been tribe-chiefs ; and when they claimed a dominion which was at once
^ Hence the numbers attached all distinguish the years of their
to the names of the Emperors regnum from those of the iinpe'
are often different in Greiman and Hum. Cardinal Baronius will not
Italian writers, the latler not call HenryV anything but Henry
reckoning Henry the Fowler nor III, not recognizing Henry IVs '
Conrad I. So Henry III (of coronation, because it was per-
Germany) calls himself '* Impe- formed by an antipope. rator Henricus Secundus;" and
216 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap.XII. territorial and universal, they could not separate their title from the spot which it was their boast to possess, and by virtue of whose name they ruled. '^ Bome/^ says the biographer of St. Adalbert, *' seeing that she both is and is called the head of the world and the mistress of cities, is alone able to give to kings imperial power, and since she cherishes in her bosom the body of the Prince of the Apostles, she ought of right to appoint the Prince of the whole earth^/^ The crown was there- fore too sacred to be conferred by any one but the supreme Pontiff, or in any city less august Origin and than the ancient capital. Had it become hereditary Mtrw-a^- ^^ ^^y family, Lothar Fs, for instance, or Otto^s, tice. this feeling might have worn off; as it was, each
successive transfer, to Guido, to Otto, to Henry II, to Conrad' the Salic, strengthened it. The force of custom, tradition, precedent, is incalculable when checked neither by written rules nor free discussion'^. What sheer assertion will do is shewn by the success of a forgery so gross as the Isidorian decretals. No arguments are needed to discredit the alleged decree of Pope Benedict VIII®, which prohibited the German prince from taking the name or office of Emperor till approved and consecrated by the pontiff, but a
<^ Life of S. Adalbert (written It is on the face of it a most im-
at Borne early in the eleventh pudent forgery: *'Ne quisqiiam
century, probably by a brother audacter Romani Imperii scep-
of the monastery of SS. Boniface tram praepostere g^stare princeps
and Alexius) in Fertz, M.OJI. iv. appetat neve Imperator dici aut
<* DonnigeS; Bevtschea Staats- esse valeat nisi quem Papa Bo-
rechtf vol. i. manus morum probitate aptum
' ® Given by Glaber Budolphus. client," &c.
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE, 217
doctrine so favourable to papal pretensions was sure Chap. XII. not to want advocacy ; Hadrian IV proclaims it in the broadest terms^ and through the efforts of the clergy and the spell of reverence in the Teutonic princes, it passed into an unquestioned belief. That none ventured to use the title till the Pope conferred it^ made it seem in some manner to depend on his will, enabled him to exact conditions from every can- didate, and gave a colour to his pretended suzerainty. Since by feudal theory every honour and estate is held from some superior, and since the divine com- mission has been without doubt issued directly to the Pope, must not the whole earth be his fief, and he the lord paramount, to whom even the Emperor is a vassal? This argument, which derived consider-* able plausibility from the rivalry between the Em- peror and other monarchs, as compared with the universal and undisputed authority of the Pope, was a favourite with the high sacerdotal party : first dis- tinctly advanced by Hadrian IV, when he set up the picture' representing Lothar^s homage, which had so irritated the followers of Barbarossa, though it had already been hinted at in Gregory VJI's gift of the crown to Rudolf of Suabia, with the line, —
" Petra dedit Petro, Petma diadema Rudolf o."
Nor was it only by putting him at the Pontiff^s mercy that this dependence of the imperial name
' Odious especially for the inscription, — ^
'* Rex venit ante fores nuUo prius urbis honore ; Post homo fit Papse^ sumit quo dante coronam." — Radewic.
218 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. XII. on a coronation in the city injured the German sovereigns. With strange inconsistency it was not pretended that the Emperor's rights were any nar- rower before he received the rite : he could summon synods, confirm papal elections, exercise jurisdiction over the citizens : his claim of the crown itself could not, at least till the times of the Gregorys and the Innocents, be positively denied. For no one thought of contesting the right of the German na- tion to the Empire, or the authority of the electoral princes, strangers though they were, to give Rome and Italy a master. The republican followers of Arnold of Brescia might murmur, but they could not dispute the truth of the proud lines in which Gunther Ligurinus, the p'oet of Barbarossa, describes the result of the conquest of Charles the Great : —
'* Ex quo Bomanum nostra virtute redemptum HoBtibiis expulsis, ad nos iustissimus ordo Transtulit imperium : Bomani gloria regni Nos penes est. Quemcunque sibi Germania regem Prseficit, hunc dives summisso vertioe Roma Suscipit, et verso Tiberim regit ordine Bhenus."
But the real strength of the Teutonic kingdom was wasted in the pursuit of a glittering toy : once in his reign each Emperor undertook a long and
8 MedisBval history is full of and its sacred ampvUa ; so the
instances of the superstitious Scottish king must be crowned
veneration attached to the rite of at Scone, an old seat of Pictish
coronation (made by the Church royalty ; so no Hungarian coro-
almost a sacrament), and to the nation was valid unless made
special places where, or even with the crown of St. Stephen ;
*\.^ utensils with which it was per- the possession whereof is stiU
formed. Everyone knows the accounted so valuable by the
importance in France of Bheims Austrian court.
X
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 219
dangerous expedition^ and dissipated in an inglorious Chaf.XII. and ever to be repeated strife the forces that might have achieved conquest elsewhere, or made him feared and obeyed at home.
At this epoch appears another title, of which more The HiU must be said. To the accustomed '^ Roman Empire^^ EmpU-e" Frederick Barbarossa adds the epithet of ^^ Holy" Of its earlier origin, under Conrad II (the Sahc), which some have supposed^, there is no documentary- trace, though there is also no proof to the contrary K So far as is known it occurs first in the famous Privilege of Austria, granted by Frederick in the fouirth year of his reign, the second of his empire, ^^terram AustrisB quae clypeus et cor sacri imperii esse dinoscitur^ :^^ then afterwards, in other mani- festos of his reign ; for example, in a letter to Isaac Angelus of Byzantium^, and in the summons to the princes to help him against Milan : ^^ Quia .... urbis et orbis gubemacula tenemus .... sacro im- perio et divsB reipublicae consulere debemus"^ '/^ where the second phrase is a synonym explanatory of the first. Used occasionally by Henry VI and Frederick II, it is more frequent under their successors, William, Richard, Rudolf, till after Charles IV^s time it be- comes habitual, for the last few centuries indispens-.
^ Zedler, Universal Lexicon, ting the terms '' sacrum " and
s. V. Reich, ''Eomanum" against the asper-
i It does not occur before sions of Blondel.
Frederick I's time in any of the ^ Pertz, Mon, G, H,, torn. iv.
documents printed by Pertz ; and (legum ii.)
this is the date which Boeclerus * Ibid. iv.
also assigns in his treatise. Be ™ Kadewic. Sacro Invperio Romano^ yindica*
•/
220 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap.XII. able. Regarding the origin of so singular a title many theories have been advanced. Some declared it a perpetuation of the court style of Rome and Byzantium^ which attached sanctity to the person of the monarch: thus David Blondel, contending for the honour of Prance, calls it a mere epithet of the Emperor, applied by confusion to his government". Others saw in it a religious meaning, referring to Daniel's prophecy, or to the fact that the Empire was contemporary with Christianity, or to Christ's birth under it **. Strong churchmen derived it from the dependence of the imperial crown on the Pope. There were not wanting persons to maintain that it meant nothing more than great or splendid. We ■ need not, however, be in any great doubt as to its true meaning and purport. The ascription of sacredness to the person, the palace, the letters, and so forth, of the sovereign, so common in the later ages of Rome, had been partly retained in the German court. Liud- prand calls Otto ^^imperator sanctissimus p.'' Still this sanctity, which the Greeks above all others lavished on their princes, is something personal, is nothing more than the divinity that always hedges a king. Far more intimate and peculiar was the
« Blondellus adv. Cbiffletram. Peter de Andlo, book i. chap. vii. Most of these theories are stated p So in the song on the capture
by Boeclerus. Jordanes {Chro- of the Emperor Lewis II by
nica) says, " Sacri imperii quod Adalgisus of Benevento, we find
non est dubium sancti Spiritus the words, " Ludhuicmn com-
ordinatione, secundum qualitatem prenderunt sancto , pio, Augusto."
ipsam et exigentiam meritorum (Quoted by Gregorovius^Gestf Aic^
humanorum disponi," der Stadt Mom im MiUelaUer, iii.
o Marquord Freher's notes to p. 185.)
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 221
relation of the revived Boman Empire to the church Chap.XII. and religion. As has been said abeady, it was neither more nor less than the visible Church, seen on its secular side, the Christian society organized as a state under a form divinely appointed, and there- fore the name " Holy Roman Empire ^^ was the need- ful and rightful counterpart to that of ^^ Holy Catholic Church/^ Such had long been the belief, and so the title might have had its origin as far back as the tenth or ninth century, might even have emanated from Charles himself. Alcuin in one of his letters uses the phrase ^^imperium Christianum.^^ But there was a further reason for its introduction at this particular epoch. Ever since Hildebrand had claimed for the priesthood exclusive sanctity and supreme jurisdiction, the papal party had not ceased to speak of the civil power as being, compared with that of their own chief, merely secular, earthly, profane. It may be conjectured that to meet this re- proach, no less injurious than insulting, Frederick or his advisers began to use in public documents the expression "'Holy Empire/^ thereby wishing to as- sert the divine institution and religious duties of the office he held. Previous Emperors had called them- selves " Catholici,^^ " Christiani,^^ " ecclesise defen- sores*;^^ now their State itself is consecrated an earthly theocracy. "Deus Romanum imperium ad- versusschismaecclesiaBprseparavit',^' writes Frederick to the English Henry II. The theory was one which
4 Groldast^ CoTistitxaiones, ' Pertz, M. G, H., legg. ii.
222 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap.XTI. the best and greatest Emperors, Charles, Otto the Great, Henry III, had most striven to carry out; it continued to be zealously upheld when it had long ceased to be practicable. In the proclamations of mediaeval kings there is a constant dwelling on their Divine commission. Power in an a^e of violence sought to justify while it enforced its commands, to make brut-e force less brutal by appeals to a higher sanction. This is seen nowhere more than in the style of the German sovereigns : they delight in the phrajses ^' maiestas sacrosancta ^y' " imperator divina ordinante providentia,*' '^divina pietate,'' ''per mi- «"^-ncordiam Dei*;^^ many of which were preserved till, like those used now by other European kings, they had become at last more grotesque than solemn. The Emperor Joseph II, at the end of the eighteenth century, was " Advocate of the Christian Church,'^ '' Vicar of Christ,"' '' Imperial head of the faithful," '' Leader of the Christian army,"' " Protector of Palestine, of general councils, of the Catholic faith ^" The title, if it added little to the power, yet cer- tainly seems to have increased the dignity of the Empire, and by consequence the jealousy of other states, of Prance especially. This did not, however, go so far as to prevent its recognition by the Pope and the French king*, and after the sixteenth cen- tmy it would have been a breach of diplomatic
■ ''Apostolic majesty" was the " Moaer, Jtomiache Kay ser.
proper title of the king of Hun- * Urban IV used the title in
gary. The Austrian court has 1259: Francis I (of France) calls
recently revived it. the Empire "sacrosanctum."
* 'Pertz, passim.
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 223
courtesy to omit it. Nor have imitators been want- Chap.XII. ingy : witness such titles as ''Most Christian king/' '' Catholic king/' '' Defender of the Faith z/'
y Cf. "Holy Rusam." of the whole West, like that of
' It is almost superfluous to Charles, but of Germany and
observe that the beginning of the Italy, with a claim, which was
title ' Holy * has nothing to do never more than a claim, to uni-
with the beginning of the Em- versal sovereignty, its beginning
pire itself. Essentially and sub- is fixed by most of the German
stantially, the Holy Boman Em- writers, whose practice has been
pire was, as has been shewn followed in the text, at the coro-
already, the creation of Charles nation of Otto the Great. But
the Great. Looking at it more the title was at least one, and
technically, as the monarchy, not probably two centuries later.
t"-,
3
-/
CHAPTER XIIL
FALL OF THE HOHBNSTAUFEN.
SCh. XUlI In the three preceding chapters the Holy Empire ^ has been described in what is not only the most
brilliant but the most momentous period of its his- tory ; the period of its rivalry with the Popedom for the chief place in Christendom. For it was mainly through their relations with the spiritual power, by their friendship and protection at first, no less than by their subsequent hostility, that the Teutonic Emperors influenced the developement of European politics. The reform of the Roman Church which went on during the reigns of Otto I and his successors down to Henry III, and which was chiefly due to the efforts of those monarchs, was -the true beginning of the grand period of the Middle Ages, the first of that long series of movements, changes, and creations in the ecclesiastical system of Europe which was, so to speak, the master current of history, secular as well as religious, during the centuries which followed. The first result of Henry IIFs purification of the Papacy was seen in Hildebrand^s attempt to subject all jurisdiction to that of his own chair, and in the long struggle of the Investitures, which brought out into clear light the opposing pretensions of the tem- poral and spiritual powers. Although destined in
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 225
the end to bear far other fruit, the immediate effect Ch.XIII. of this struggle was to evoke in all classes an intense religious feeling ; and, while opening up new fields of ambition to the hierarchy, to stimulate wonder- fully their power of political organization. It was this impulse that gave birth to the Crusades, and that enabled the Popes, stepping forth ais the right- ful leaders of a religious war, to bend it to serve their own ends : it was thus too that they struck the alliance — strange as such an alliance seems now — with the rebellious cities of Lombardy, and proclaimed themselves the protectors of municipal freedom. But the third and crowning triumph of the Holy See was reserved for the thirteenth century. In the founda- tion of the two great orders of ecclesiastical knight- hood, the all-powerful all-pervading Dominicans and Franciscans, the religious fervour of the Middle Ages culminated : in the overthrow of the only power which could pretend to vie with her in antiquity, in sanctity, in universality, the Papacy saw herself exalted to rule alone over the kings of the earth. Of that overthrow, following with terrible suddenness in the days of strength and glory which we have just been witnessing, this chapter has now to speak.
It happened strangely enough that just while their ruin was preparing, the house of Swabia gained over their ecclesiastical foes what seemed likely to prove an advantage of the first moment. The son and suc- cessor of Barbarossa waa Henry VI, a man who had inherited more than all his father's harshness with none of his father's generosity. By his marriage
Q
?'^'> {E HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
0 I with ( tnce, the heiress of the Norman kings,
fifZ-^ , * he had ^ ^me master of Naples and Sicily. Em- T190- . . bolden- 1 • the possession of what had been hitherto the str uj old of his predecessors' bitterest enemies, and able to threaten the Pope from south as well as north, Henry conceived a scheme which might have wonderfully changed the history of Germany and Italy. He proposed to the Teutonic magnates to lighten their burdens by uniting these newly-acquired countries to the Empire, to turn their feudal lands into allodial, and to make no further demands for money on the clergy, on condition that they should pronounce the crown hereditary in his faiyily. Re- sults of the highest importance would ha\^ followed this change, which Henry advocated by setting forth the perils of interregna, and which he doubtless meant to be but part of an entirely new system of polity. Already so strong in Germany, and with an absolute command of their new kingdom, the Hohen- staufen might have dispensed with the renounced feudal services, and built up a firm centralized system, like that of France. First, however, the Saxon princes, then some ecclesiastics headed by Conrad of Mentz, opposed the scheme ; the pontiff retracted his consent, and Henry had to content himself with getting his infant son Frederick the Second chosen king of the Romans. On Henry's untimely death the election was set aside, and the contest which followed between Otto of Brunswick and Philip of Hohenstaufen, brother of Henry the Sixth, gave the Popedom, now guided by the genius of Innocent the Third, an opportunity of
i
I
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 227
extending its sway at the expense of its antagonist. Ch. XIII. The Pope moved heaven and earth in behalf of Otto, jmiocent whose family had been the constant rivals of the j^ ^^ Hohenstaufen, and who was himself willing to promise "^ ' all that Innocent required; but Philip^s piersonal merits '^ and the vast possessions of his house gave him while he lived the ascendancy in Germany. His death by the hand of an assassin, while it seemed to vindicate the Pope^s choice, left the Swabian party without a head, and the Papal nominee was soon recognized over the whole Empire. But Otto IV became less submissive as he felt his throne more secure. If he was a Guelf by birth, his acts in Italy, whither he had gone to receive the imperial crown, were those of a Ghibeline, anxious to reclaim the rights he had but just forsworn. The Roman Church at last deposed and excommunicated her ungrateful son, and Innocent rejoiced in a second successful assertion of pontifical supremacy, when Otto was dethroned by the youthful Frederick the Second, whom a tragic irony sent into the field of politics as the champion of the Holy See, whose hatred was to embitter his life and extinguish his house. "
Upon the events of that terrific strife, for which Frederick Emperor and Pope girded themselves up for the last ,212-^^50. time, the narrative of Frederick the Second^s career, with its romantic adventures, its sad picture of mar- vellous powers lost on an age not ripe for them, blasted as by a curse in the moment of victory, it is not necessary, were it even possible, here to enlarge. That conflict did indeed determine the fortunes of the
Q 2
228 TEE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
CH.XIII. German kingdom no less than of the republics of Italy, but it was upon Italian ground that it was fought out and it is to Italian history that its details belong. So, too, of Frederick himself. Out of the long array of the Germanic successors of Charles, he is, with Otto III, the only one who comes before us with a genius and a frame of character that are not those of a Northern or a Teuton*. There dwelt in him, it is true, all the energy and knightly valour of his father Henry and his grandfather Barbarossa. But aloDg with these, and changing their direction, trere other gifts, inherited perhaps from his Italian mother and fostered by his education among the orange-groves of Palermo— a love of luxury and beauty; an intellect refined, subtle, philosophical. Through the mist of calumny and fable it is but dimly that the truth of the man can be discerned, and the outlines that appear serve to quicken rather than appease the curiosity with which we regard one of the most extraordinary personages in history. A sensualist, yet also a warrior and a politician ; . a pro- found lawgiver and an impassioned poet ; in his youth fired by crusading fervour, in later life persecuting heretics while himself accused of blasphemy and unbelief; of winning manners and ardently beloved by his followers, but with the stain of more than one
* I quote from the Liber Au- nisi temporale : fiiit malleus Ko-
gustalis printed among Petrarch's manse ecclesise.** works the following curious de- As Otto III had been called
scription of Frederick : " Fuit '* mirabilia mundi," so Frederick
armorum strenuus, linguarum II is often spoken of in his own
peritus, rigorosus, luxuriosus, time as " stupor mundi Frideri-
epicurus» nihil curans vel credens cus/'
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 229
cruel deed upon his name ; lie was the marvel of his Ch. xni. own generation^ and succeeding ages looked back with awe, not unmingled with pity, upon the in- scrutable figure of the last Emperor who had braved all the terrors of the Church and died beneath her ban, the last who had ruled from the sands of the ocean to the shores of the Sicilian sea. But while they pitied they condemned. The undying hatred of the Papacy threw round his memory a lurid light ; him and him alone of all the imperial line, Dante, the worshipper of the Empire, must perforce deliver to the flames of helP.
Placed as the Empire was, it was scarcely possible Struggle of for its head not to be involved in war with the con* J^j^ ^^ stantly aggressive Popedom — aggressive in her claims Papacy. of territorial dominion in Italy as well as of ecclesi- astical jurisdiction throughout the world. But it was Frederick's peculiar misfortune to have given the Popes a hold over him which they well knew how to use. In a moment of youthful enthusiasm he had taken the cross from the hands of an eloquent monk, and his delay to fulfil the vow was denounced as impious neglect. Excommunicated by Gregory IX for not going to Palestine, he went, and was excommunicated for going : having concluded an advantageous peace, he sailed for Italy, and was a third time excommunicated for returning. To Pope Gregory he was at last after a fashion reconciled, but with the accession of Innocent IV the flame burst out afresh. Upon the special pretexts which kindled the
*> " Quk entro h lo secondo Federico." — Inferno^ canto x.
{
I
I
I
I
! 230 THJS HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XIII. strife it is not worth while to descant : the real causes were always the same, and could only be removed by the submission of one or other combatant. Chief among them was Frederick's possession of Sicily. Now were seen the fruits which Sarbarossa had stored up for his house when he gained for Henry his son the hand of the Norman heiress. Naples and Sicily had been for some two hundred years recognized as a fief of the Holy See, and the Pope, who felt himself in danger while encircled by the powers of his rival, was determined to use his advantage to the full and make it the means of extinguishing imperial authority throughout Italy. But although the struggle was far more of a terri- torial and political one than that of the previous century had been, it reopened every former source of strife, and passed into a contest between the civil and the spiritual potentate. The old war-cries af i Henry and Hildebrand, of Barbarossa and Alexander,
I roused again the imquenchable hatred of Italian fac-
' 1 tions : the pontiff asserted the transference of the
Empire as a fief, and declared that the power of Peter, symbolized by the two keys, was temporal as well as spiritual: the Emperor appealed to law, to the indelible rights of Caesar ; and denounced his foe as the antichrist of the Apocalypse, since it was God's second vicar whom he was resisting. The one scoffed at anathema, upbraided the avarice of the Church, and treated her soldiery, the friars, with a severity not seldom ferocious. The other solemnly deposed a rebellious and heretical prince, offered the imperial
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE, 231
crown to Robert of France, to the heir of Denmark, Cirxilf. to Haco the Norse king ; succeeded at last in raising up rivals in Henry of Thuringia and WiUiam of Holland. Yet throughout it is less the Teutonic Emperor who is attacked than the Sicilian king, the unbeliever and friend of Mohammedans, the here- ditary enemy of the Church, the assailant of Lom- bard independence, whose success must leave the Papacy defenceless. And as it was from the Sicilian kingdom that the strife chiefly arose, so was the possession of the Sicilian kingdom a source rather of weakness than of strength, for it distracted Fre- derick's forces and put him in the false position of a liegeman resisting his lawful suzerain. Truly, as the Greek proverb says, the gifts of foes are no gifts, and bring no profit with them. The Norman kings were more terrible in their death than in their life: they had sometimes baffled the Teutonic Em- peror ; their heritage destroyed him.
With Frederick fell the Empire. From the ruin that overwhelmed the greatest of its houses it emergedl living indeed, and destined to a long life, but so shat4 tered, crippled, and degraded, that it could never morel be to Europe and to Germany what it once had been.i In the last act of the tragedy were joined the enemy i who had now blighted its strength and the rival who was destined to insult its weakness and at last blot out its name. The murder of Frederick's grandson Conradin was the suggestion of Pope Clement, the deed of Charles of France.
The Lombard league had successftilly resisted
J
232 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
CH.XIII. Frederick's armies and the more dangerous Ghibeline Italy lost nobles : their strong walls and swarming population to tU made defeats in the open field hardly felt j and now that South Italy too had passed away from a Ger- man line — first to Anjou^ afterwards to Aragon — it was plain that the peninsula was irretrievably lost to the Emperors. Why, however, should they not still be strong beyond the Alps ? was their position worse than that of England when Normandy and Aquitaine no longer obeyed a Plantagenet? The force that had enabled them to rule so widely would be all the greater in a narrower sphere. Dedme of So indeed it might once have been, but now it was power t^ too late. The German kingdom broke down beneath Germany, the weight of the Roman Empire. To be universal sovereign Germany had sacrificed her own political existence. The necessity which their projects in Italy and disputes with the Pope laid the Emperors under of purchasing by concessions the support of their own princes j the ease with which in their ab- sence the magnates could usurp, the difficulty which the monarch returning found in resuming the privi- leges of his crown, the temptation to revolt and set up pretenders to the throne which the Holy See held out, these were the causes whose steady action laid the foundation of that territorial independence which rose into a stable fabric at the era of the Great Interregnum^. Frederick II had by two Pragmatic
*> The interregnum is by some the whole period from Frederick reckoned as the two years before II or Conrad IV till Rudolf's Bichard's election ; by others, as accession.
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 233
sanctions, a.d. i2!ZO and 123a, granted, or rather eon- Ce. XIII. firmed, rights already customary, such as to give the bishops aud nobles legal sovereignty in their own towns and territories, except when the Emperor should be present ; and thus his direct jurisdiction became restricted to his narrowed domain, and to the cities immediately dependent on the crown. With so much less to do, an Emperor became altogether a less necessary personage ; and hence the seven mag- nates of the realm, now by law or custom sole electors, were in no haste to fill up the place of Conrad IV, whom the supporters of his father Frederick had acknowledged. William of Holland was in the field. Double but rejected by the Swabian party : on his death a ^r^j^^ ^ new election was called for, and at last set on foot. ofUn^iand ^ The archbishop of Cologne advised his brethren to y^rwo of *"^^ ' choose some one rich enough to support the dignity, OastUe. not strong enough to be feared by the electors : both requisites met in Richard Plantagenet, earl of Corn- wall, brother of the English Henry Ilf. He received three, eventually four votes, came to Germany, and was crowned at Aachen. But three of the electors, finding that his bribe to them was lower than to the others, seceded in disgust, and chose Alfonso X of Castile*^, who, shrewder than his competitor, con- tinued to study astronomy at Toledo, enjoying the splendours of his title while troubling himself about it no further than to issue now and then a pro- clamation. Meantime the condition of Germany
c Surnamed, from his scientific tastes, "the Wise."
234 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
CH.XIII. was frightful. The new Didius JuUanus, the chos6n State of of princes baser than the praetorians whom they Qermmy copied, had neither the character nor the outward
durvng the '^ •!•/.
Interreg- means to make himself respected. Every floodgate ****"*' of anarchy was opened : prelates and barons extended
their domains by war: robber-knights infested the highways and the rivers: the misery of the weak, the tyranny and violence of the strong, were such as had not been seen for centuries. Things were even worse than under the Saxon and Franconian Em- perors ; for the petty nobles who had then been in some measure controlled by their dukes were now, after the extinction of the great houses, left without any feudal superior. Only in the cities was shelter or peace to be found. Those of the Rhine had already leagued themselves for mutual defence, and main- tained a struggle in the interests of commerce and order against universal brigandage. At last, when Richard had been some time dead, it was felt that such things could not go on for ever : with no public law, and no courts of justice, an Emperor, the em- bodiment of legal government, was the only resource. The Pope himself, having now sufficiently improved the weakness of his enemy, found the disorganization of Germany beginning to tell upon his revenues, and threatened that if the electors did not appoint an Emperor, he would. Thus urged, they chose, in Rudolf of A.D. 1^73, Rudolf, count of Hapsburg, founder of
Hapshnrg. ^^^ ^^^^^ ^f Austria*.
^ Hapsburg is a castle in the Aar- near the line of railway from Olten gau on the banks of the Aar, and to Zurich. ** Within the ancient
/
i
I
\
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 235
From this point there begins a new era. We have Ch. XIII. seen the Roman Empire revived in a.d. 800, by a change in prince whose vast, dominions gave ground to his ^^posiUm claim of universal monarchy; again erected, in a.d. jpire. ^6%y on the narrower but firmer basis of the German kingdom. We have seen Otto the Great and his successors during the three following centuries, a line of monarchs of unrivalled vigour and abilities, strain every nerve to make good the pretensions of their office against the rebels in Italy and the ecclesiastical power. Those efforts had now failed signally and hopelessly. Each successive Emperor had entered the strife with resources scantier than his predeces- sors, each had been more decisively vanquished by the Pope, the cities, -and the princes. The Roman Empire might, and so far as its practical utility was concerned, ought now to have been suffered to ex- pire; nor could it have ended more gloriously than with the last of the Hohenstaufen. That it did not so expire, but lived on six hundred years more, till it became a piece of antiquarianism hardly more venerable than ridiculous — ^till, as Voltaire said, all that could be said about it was that it was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire — was owing partly indeed to the belief, still unshaken, that it_was a necesskl'}^ pari of ITTe world's "order, yet chiefly- to
walls of Vindonissa, " says Gibbon, man conquests, of feudal or Aus- " the castle of Hapsburg, the ab- trian tyranny, of monkish super- bey of Konigsfeld, and the town stition,and of industrious freedom. 6i Bruck have successively arisen. If he be truly a philosopher, he The philosophic traveller may will applaud the merit and hap- compare the monuments of Bo- piness of his own time."
236 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. Xin. its coniiection;,_wbifih was by tl^js firnfi indtfp^h^h^^^j with the German kingdom. The Germans had con- fniifi(Tftft^ft l^fwjT^^ their sovereign ^o long,
and had grown so fond of the style and pretensions of a dignity whose possession appeared to exalt them above the other peoples of Europe, that it was now too late for them to sepiarate the local from the iini- Iversal monarch. If a German king was to be main- ^ined at all, hft v^w^' 1;^ ^tipmi^^ T?.«np/^T»^T» . and a German king there must still be. Deeply, nay, mor- tally wounde(3r""B&-thr^vent proved his power to have been by the disasters of the Empire to which it had been linked, the time was by no means come for its extinction. In the unsettled state of society, and the conflict of innumerable petty potentates, no force save feudalism was able to hold society together ; and its efficacy for that purpose depended, as the anarchy of the recent interregnum shewed, upon the presence of the re- cognized feudal head. Decline of That head, however, was no longer what he had ^power^n ^^^^' The relative position of Germany and France Oermanyas was now exactly the reverse of that which they had wUhFrcmce occupied two ccnturies earlier. Rudolf was as conspi- andEng- cuously a weaker sovereign than Philip III of France, as the Franconian Emperor Henry III had been stronger than the Capetian Philip I. In every other state of Europe the tendency of events had been to centralize the administration and increase the power of the monarch, even in England not to diminish it : in Germany alone had political union become weaker.
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRF. 237
and the independence of the princes more eo fii.ned. Ch. XIII. The causes of this change are not far to seek. They
^11 Fi i.olve themselves into this one, that the German klii<j' attempted too much at once. The rulers of
\:'-noi3, where manners were less rude than in the « ti cr Transalpine lands, and where the Third Estate ^:<}M into power more quickly, had reduced one by •J •' tiie great feudataries by whom the first Cape- tians had been scarcely recognized. The English kings had annexed Wales, Cumbria, and part of Ireland, had obtained a prerogative great if not uncontrolled, and exercised no doubtful sway through every comer of their country. Both had won their successes by the concentration on that single object of their whole personal activity, and by the skilful use of every device whereby their feudal rights, per- sonal, judicial, and legislative, could be applied to fetter the vassal. Meantime the German monarch, whose utmost efforts it would have needed to tame his fierce barons and maintain order through wide terri- tories occupied by races unlike in dialect and cus- toms, had been struggling with the Lombard cities and the Normans of South Italy, and had been for full two centuries the object of the unrelenting enmity of the Roman Pontiff. And in this latter contest, by which more than by any other the fate of the Empire was decided, he fought under disad- vantages far greater than his brethren in England and France. William the Conqueror had defied Hildebrand, William Rufus had resisted Anselm; but the Emperors Henry IV and Barbarossa had to
238 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE,
GH.Xin. cope with prelates who were Hildebrand and Anselm in one ; the spiritual heads of Christendom as well as the primates of their realm^ the Empire. And thus, while the ecclesiastics of Germany were a body- more formidable from their possessions than those of any other European country, and enjoying far lai^r privileges, the Emperor could not, or could with far less effect, win them over by invoking against the Pope that national feeling which made the cry of Gallican liberties so welcome even to the clergy of France. Bdatimsof After repeated defeats, each more crushing than ^amdike^ the last, the imperial power, so far from looking Empire, down on the papal, could not even maintain itself on an equal footing. Against no pontiff since Gre- gory VII had the monarches right to name or con- firm, undisputed in the days of the Ottos and of Henry III, been made good. It was the turn of the Emperor to repel a similar claim of the Holy See to the function of reviewing his own election, examining into his merits, and rejec^ting him if un- sound, that is to say, impatient of priestly tyranny. A letter of Innocent III, who was the first to make this demand in terms, was inserted by Gregory IX in his digest of the Canon Law, the ine^Vxaustible armoury of the churchman, and continued to be quoted thence by every canonist till the end of the sixteenth century «. , It was not difficult to find
^ CorptM Juris Canonici, Deer, promovendam ad imperium, ad
Greg. i. 6, cap. 34, Venerabilem : nos spectat, qui eum inungimus,
" Iu8 et authoritas examinandi consecramus, et coronamus." personam electam in regem et
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 239
grounds on which to base such a doctrine. Gregory ch. XIII. VII deduced it with characteristic boldness from the power of the keys, and the superiority over all other dignities which must needs appertain to the Pope as arbiter of eternal weal or woe. Others took their stand in the analogy of clerical ordination, and urged that since the Pope in consecrating the Emperor gave him a title to the obedience of all Christian men, he must have himself the right of approving or rejecting the candidate according to his merits. Others again, appealing to the Old Testament, shewed how Samuel discarded Saul and anointed David in his room, and argued that the Pope now must have powers at least equal to those of the Hebrew prophets. But the ascendancy of the doc- trine dates from the time of Pope Innocent III, whose ingenuity discovered for it an historical basis. It was by the favour of the Pope, he declared, that the Empire was taken away from the Greeks and given to the Germans in the person of Charles'^ and the authority which Leo then exercised as God^s representa,tive must abide thenceforth and for ever in his successors, who can therefore at any time recall the gift, and bestow it on a person or a nation more wdtthy than its present holders. This is the famous theory of the Translation of the Empire,
' "Illisprincipibus," writes In- eos ius et potestas huiusmodi ab
xiocent,"iu8etpotestatemeligendi apostolica sede pervenerit, qase
regem [Romanorum] in imperato- Bomanum imperium in persona
rem postmodum promovendum re- magnifici Caroli a Grsecis trans-
cognoBcimus, ad quos ds inre ac tulit in Germanos." — Deer. Greg,
antiqua consuetudine noscitnr i. 6, cap. 34, VefiMrabilem. pertinere, prsesertim quum ad
MO THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Jh. XIII. which plays so large a part in controversy down till the seventeenth century s, a theory with plausibility enough to make it generally successful, yet one which to an impartial eye appears far removed from the truth of the facts ^. Leo III did not suppose, any more than did Charles himself, that it was by his sole pontifical authority that the crown was given to the Frank; nor do we find such a notion put forward by any of his successors down to the twelfth century. Gregory VII in particular, in a remarkable letter dilating on his prerogative, ap- peals to the substitution by papal interference of Pipin for the last Merovingian, and even goes back to cite the case of Theodosius humbling himself before St. Ambrose, but says never a word about this " translatio,^^ excellently as it would have served his purpose.
Sound or unsound, however, these arguments their work, for they were urged skilfully and boldly, and none denied that it was by the Pope only that the crown could be lawfully imposed*. In some instances the rights claimed were actually maie good. Thus Innocent III withstood Philip aild overthrew Otto IV; thus another haughty priest
s Its influence, however^ as lation of the Empire "many books
Dollinger {Da^ Kaisertkum Karls remain to us : many more have
des Orossen und seiner Nackfolger) probably perished, A good
remarks, first became great when, although far from impartial sum-
some fifty years after Innocent mary of the controversy may be
wrote the letter, it was inserted found in Yagedes, De Lud^fyriis
in the digest of the canon law. Aul<x Romance in transferendo
' Vid. supra, p. 57. Imperio Jtomano.
* Upon this so-called " Trans-
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE, 241
commanded the electors to choose the Landgrave ch.XIII. of Thuringia (a.d. 1246), and was by some of them obeyed; thus Gregory X compelled the recognition of Rudolf. The further pretensions of the Popes to the vicariate of the Empire during interregna the Germans never admitted^- Still their place was now generally felt to be higher than that of the monarch, and their control over the three spiritual electors and the whole body of the clergy was far more effective than his. A spark of national feeling was at length kindled by the exactions and shame- less subservience to France of the court of Avignon'; and the infant democracy of industry and intelli- gence represented by the cities and by the English Franciscan Occam, supported Lewis IV in his con- flict with John XXII, till even the princes who had . risen by the help of the Pope were obliged to oppose him. The same sentiment dictated the reforms of
^ ' ' Yacante imperio Komano, was ugly and one-eyed (" est homo cum in illo ad sscularem iudicem monoculus et vultu sordido, non nequeat baberi recursus, ad sum- potest esse Imperator"), and bad mum pontificem, cui in persona taken a wife from the serpent B. J*etri terreni simul et coelestis brood of Frederick II (" de san- imperii iura Deus ipse commisit, guine viperali Friderici"), de- imperii preedicti iurisdictio regi- dared himself Vicar of the Em- men et dispositio devolvitur." — pire, and assumed the crown and Bull Si fratrum (of John XXI, sword of Constantine. in A.D. 1 3 16), in BvUar. Rom. ^ Avignon was not yet in the So again : " Attendentes quod territory of France : it lay within Imperii Romani regimen cura the bounds of the kingdom of et administratio tempore quo Aries. But the French power illud vacare contingit ad nos was nearer than that of the Em- pertinet, sicut dignoscitur per- peror ; and pontifis many of tinere." (Quoted from BainaJ- them French by extraction sym- dus by Yon Banke, i. p. 45.) pathized, as was natural, with So Boniface VIII, refusing to princes of their own race, recognize Albert I, because he
K
242 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch.XIII. Constance, but the imperial power which might have floated onwards and higher on the turning tide of popular opinion lacked men equal to the occasion: the Hapsburg Frederick the Third, timid and super- stitious, abased himself before the Bomish court, and his house has generally adhered to the alliance then struck.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE GERMANIC CONSTITUTION ; THE SEVEN
ELBCTOKS.
The reign of Frederick the Second was not less Ch. XTV. fatal to the domestic power of the German king than Territorial to the European supremacy of the Emperor. His two S^^eiffiuy Pragmatic Sanctions had conferred rights that made prin4:es. the feudal aristocracy almost independent, and the long anarchy of the Interregnum had enabled them not only to use but to extend and fortify their power. Rudolf of Hapsburg had striven, not wholly in vain, to coerce their insolence, but the contest between his son Albert and Adolf of Nassau which followed his death, the short and troubled reign of Albert himself, the absence of Henry the Seventh, the civil war of Lewis of Bavaria and Frederick duke of Austria, rival claimants of the imperial throne, the difficulties in which Lewis, the successftd competitor, found him- self involved with the Pope — all these circumstances tended more and more to narrow the influence of the crown and complete the emancipation of the turbulent nobles. They were now virtually supreme in their own domains, enjoying full jurisdiction, certain appeals
244 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Oh. XIV. excepted, the right of legislation, privileges of coin- ing money, of levying tolls and taxes : some were without even a feudal bond to remind them of their allegiance. The numbers of the iinmediate nobility — ^those who held directly of the crown — had increased prodigiously by the extinction of the duke- doms of Saxony, Franconia, and Swabia: along the Rhine the lord of a single tower was usually a sove- reign prince. The petty tyrants whose boast it was that they owed fealty only to God and the Emperor, shewed themselves in pi-actice equally regardless of both powers. Pre-eminent were the three great houses of Austria, Bavaria, and Luxemburg, this last having acquired Bohemia, a.d. 1309 ; next came the electors, already considered collectively more important than the Emperor, and forming for them- selves the first considerable principalities. Bran- denburg and the Bhenish Palatinate are strong independent states before the end of this period : Bohemia and the three archbishoprics almost from its beginning.
The chief object of the magnates was to keep the monarch in his present state of helplessness. Till the expenses which the crown entailed were found ruinous to its wearer, their practice was to confer it on some petty prince, such as were Rudolf and Adolf of Nassau and Gunther of Schwartzburg, seeking when they could to keep it from settling in one family. They bound the newly-elected to respect all their present immunities, including those which they had just extorted as the price of their votes, they checked
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 245
all his attempts to recover lost lands or rights : they Ch. XIY. ventured at last to depose their anointed head,
Wenzel of Bohemia. Thus fettered, the Emperor PoKcy
Em/per<yn.
sought only to make the most of his short tenure, %/
using his position to aggrandize his family and raise money"T)y' the sale'lilf" crown estates an3 privileges. Hk ^[g^ioV -arTmrgrnaTBlato to the subje??trwgg replaced by a merely legal and formal one: he^represented order and legitimate ownership, and^so far was still necessary to the political system. But progresses through the country were abandoned: unlike his predecessors, who had resigned their pa- trimony when they assumed the sceptre, he lived mostly in his own states, often without the Empire's bounds. Frederick III never entered it for twenty- seven years.
How thoroughly the national character of the ofiice was gone is shewn by the repeated attempts to bestow it on foreign potentates, who could not fill the place of a German king of the good old vigorous type. Not to speak of Richard and Alfonso, Charles of Valois was proposed against Henry VII, Edward III of England actually elected against Charles IV (his parliament forbade him to accept), George Podiebrad, king of Bohemia, against Frederick III. Sigismund was virtually a Hungarian king. The Emperor's only hope would have been in the support of the Power of cities. During the thirteenth and foui'teenth cen- **
turies they had increased wonderfully in population, wealth, and boldness : the Hanseatic confederacy was the mightiest power of the North, and cowed the
U6 MH HOLT WMAN EMPlM.
Oh. XIV. Scandinavian kings : the towns of Swabia and the Bhine formed great commercial leagues^ maintained regular wars against the counter-associations of the nobility, and seemed at one time, by an alliance with the Swiss, on the point of turning West GTermany into a federation of free municipalities. Feudalism^ however, was still too strong; the cavalry of the nobles was irresistible in the field, and the thought- less Wenzel let slip a golden opportunity of repairing the losses of two centuries. After all, the Empire was perhaps past redemption, for one fatal ailment Fmancial paralysed all iti^ efforts. The Empire was poor*
istrm. pjij^^ crown lands, which had suffered heavily imder
Frederick II, were further usurped during the con- fusion that followed ; till at last, through the reckless prodigality of sovereigns who sought only their im- mediate interest, little was left of the vast and fertile domains along the Rhine from which the Saxon and Franconian Emperors had drawn the chief part of their revenue. Regalian rights, the second fiscal resource, had fared no better — ^toUs, customs, mines, rights of coining, of harbouring Jews, and so forth, were either seized or granted away J even the advow- sons of churches had been sold or mortgaged ; and the imperial treasury depended mainly on an in- glorious trafiic in honours and exemptions. Things were so bad under Rudolf that the electors re- fused to make his son Albert king of the Romans, declaring that, while Rudolf lived, the public revenue which with difiiculty supported one mon-» arch, could much less maintain two at the same
THE SOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 24/
time*. Sigismund told his Diet, ^^ Nihil esse imperio Ch. XIV. spoliatius, nihil egentius, adeo ut qui sibi ex Germa- nise prineipibus successurus esset, qui prseter patrimo- nium nihil aliud habuerit, apud eum non imperium sed potius servitium sit futurum^/^ Patritius, the secretary of Frederick III, declared that the revenues of the Empirie scarcely covered the expenses of its am- bassadors ^. Poverty such as these expressions point to, a poverty which became greater after each elec- tion, not only involved the failure of the attempts which were sometimes made to recover usurped rights**, but put every project of reform within or war without at the mercy of a jealous Diet. The three orders of which that Diet consisted, electors, princes, and cities, were mutually hostile, and by consequence selfish; their niggardly grants did no more than keep the Empire from dying of inanition.
The changes thus briefly described were in pro- Charles IV gress when Charles the Fourth, king of Bohemia, ^^'^as^^'^j son of that blind king John of Bohemia who fell at his electoral Cressy, and grandson of Henry VII, was chosen to ^^^^^" ascend the throne. His skilful and consistent policy mmed at settling what he perhaps despaired of re- forming, and the famous instrument which, under
" Qaoted by Moser, B^miache greatly, there were, we are told,
Kayser, from Abbas Trithem. in many bishops better off than the
Chron. Sirsang. : " Regni vires Emperor.
temporum injuria nimium con- « " Proventus Imperii ita mini-
tritee viz uni alendo regi suffi- mi sunt ut legationibus vix sup-
cerent, tantum abesse ut sumptus petant." — Quoted by Moser.
in duos reges ferre queant." ^ Albert I tried in vain to
*> At Rupert's death, under wrest the tolls of the Bhine from
whom the mischief had increased the grasp of the Rhenish electors.
248
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
German kingdom not ori' ginally elective.
Ch. XIV. the name of tiie Golden Bull, became the comer- stone of the Germanic constitution/ confessed and legalized the independence of the electors and the powerlessness of the crown. The most conspicuous defect of the existing system was the uncertainty of the elections, followed as they usually were by a civil war. It was this which Charles set himself to redress.
The kingdoms founded on the ruins of the Eoman Empire by the Teutonic invaders presented in their original form a rude combination of the elective with the hereditary principle. One family in each tribe had, as the offspring of the gods, an indefeasible claim to rule, but from among the members of such a family the warriors were free to choose the bravest or the most popular as king®. That the German crown came to be purely elective, while in France, Castile, Aragon, England, Scotland, the prin- ciple of strict hereditary succession established itself, was due to the failure of heirs male in three suc- cessive dynasties; to the restless ambition of the nobles7wE6,^«»ee-%hey were not, like the French, strong enough to disregard the royal power, did their best to weaken it ; to the intrigues of the churchmen, zealous for a method of appointment prescribed by their own law and observed in capitular elections; to the wish of the Popes to gain an opening for their own influence and make effective the veto which they
^ The i^thelings of tlie line of may thus be compared with the Cerdic, among the West Saxons, Achsemenids of Persia or the and the Bavarian Agilolfings, heroic houses of early Greece.
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE, 249
claimed; above all, to the conception of the imperial Ch. XIV. office as one too holy to be, in the same manner as the regal, transmissible by blood. Had the German, like other feudal kingdoms, remained merely local and national, it would without doubt have ended by becoming a hereditary monarchy. Transformed as it was by the B/oman Empire, this could not be. The headship of the human race being, like the Papacy, the common inheritance of all mankind, could not be confined to any family, nor pass like a private estate by the ordinary rules of descent.
The right to choose the war-chief belonged, EUctoml in the earliest ages, to the whole body of freemen^ pr^i^^g Their suffi-age, which must have been very irreg^- <*»*««• larly exercised, became by degrees vested in their leaders, but the assent of the multitude, although ensured already, was needed to complete the cere- mony. It was thus that Henry the Fowler, and St. Henry, and Conrad the Franconian dukei were chosen'. Though even tradition might have com-
f Wippo, describing the elec- et viscera regni," .So Bruno says
tion of Conrad the Franconian, that Henry IV was elected by
says, "Inter confinia Moguntise the 'p&piUus.^ So Gunther Li-
et WormatisB convenerunt cuncti gurinus of Frederick I's elec-
primates et, ut ita dicam, yires tion : —
" Acturi sacrae de successione coronee Conveniunt proceres, totius viscera regni."
So Amandus, secretary of Frede- ex Transalpine regno." — Quoted
rick Barbarossa, in describing- his by Mur. Antiq. Diss. iii. And
election, says, *' Multi illustres see many other authorities to the
heroes ex Lombardia, Tuscia, same effect, collected by Pfeffin-
lanuensi et aliis Italiee dominiis, ger, Vitriarius Ulustratvs. ac maior et potior pars principum
250 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRH.
Ch. XIV. memorated what extant records place beyond a doubt^ it was commonly believed, till the end of the six- teenth century, that the elective constitution had been established, and the privilege of voting confined to seven persons, by a decree of Gregory V and Otto III, which a famous jurist describes as ^'lex a pontifice de imperatorum comitiis lata, ne ius eli- gendi penes populum Bomanum in posterum esset ^/^ St. Thomas says, ^^ Election ceased from the times of Charles the Great to those of Otto III, when Pope Gregory V established that of the seven princes, which will last as long as the holy Roman Church, who ranks above all other powers, shall have judged expedient for Christ^s faithful people ^.^^ Since it tended to exalt the papal power, this fiction was accepted and spread abroad by the clergy* And indeed, like so many other fictions, it had a sort of foundation in fact. The death of Otto III, the fourth of a line of monarchs among whom son had regularly succeeded to father, threw back the crown into the gift of the people, and was no doubt one of the chief causes why it did not in the end become hereditary *.
8 Alciatus, De Formula Ho- II. As late as a.d. 1648 we find
mani Imperii. He adds that the Pope Innocent X maintaining
Gauls and Italians were incensed that the sacred number Seven of
at the preference shewn to Ger- the electors was ** apostolica auc-
many. So too Badulfiis de Co- toritate olim prsefinitus," Bull
lumna. Zelo domus in Bullar. Bom,
^ Quoted by Gewoldus, De ^ Sometimes we hear of a de-
SepUmriratu Sacri Imperii Ro- cree made by Pope Sergius IV
mani, himself a violent advocate and his cardinals (of course equally
of Gregory's decree, though living fabulous with Otto's). So John
' as late as the days of Ferdinand Villani, iv. 2.
TBE MOLT ROMAN EMFIM. 251
Thus^ under the Saxon and I^ranconian sovereigns, Ch. XIV. the throne was theoretically elective; the assent of the chiefs and their followers being required, though little more likely to be refused than it was to an English or a French kingj practically hereditary, since both of these dynasties succeeded in occupying it for fouf generations, the father procuring the son^s election during his own lifetime* And so it might well have continued, had the right of choice been retained by the whole body of the aristocracy. But Encroack- at the election of Lothar II, a.d. 1125, we find a^^^ certain small number of magnates exercising the so- nobles, called right of praetaxation ; that is to say, choosing alone the future monarch, and then submitting him to the rest for their approval. A supreme electoral college, once formed, had both the will and the power to retain the crown in their own gift, and still further exclude their inferiors from participation. So before the end of the Hohenstaufen dynasty, two great changes had passed upon the ancient consti- tution* It had become a fundamental doctrine that the Germanic throne, unlike the thrones of other countries, was., purely elective^: nor could the influence and the liberal ofiers of Henry VI prevail on the princes to abandon what they rightly judged
^ In 1 1 5 2 we read, " Id iuria tionem reges creentur." — Otto
Romani Imperii apex habere did- Fris. Gulielmus Brito, writing
tur ut non per sanguinis propa- not much later^ says (quoted by
ginem sed per principum elec- Freher), —
" Est etenim talis dynastia Theutonicorum Ut nullus regnet super illos, ni prius ilium Eligat unanimifl cleri populique voluntas."
252 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XIV. the keystone of. their powers. And at the same time the right of prsetaxation had ripened into an exclusive privilege of election, vested in a small body* : the assent of the rest of the nobility being at first assumed, finally altogether dispensed with. On the double choice of Richard and Alfonso, a.d. 1264, the only question was as to the majority of votes in the electoral college : neither then nor afterwards was there a word of the rights of the other princes, counts and barons, important as their voices had been two centuries earlier.
The Seven The origin of that college is a matter somewhat ectars, intricate and obscure. It is mentioned a.d. 1152, and in somewhat clearer terms in 1198, as a distinct body ; but without anything to shew who composed it. First in a.d. 1265 does a letter of Pope Urban IV say that by immemorial custom the right of choosing the Roman king belonged to seven per- sons, the seven who had just divided their votes on Richard of Cornwall and Alfonso of Castile. Of these seven, three, the archbishops of Mentz, Treves, and Cologne, pastors of the richest Transalpine sees, represented the German church : the other four ought, according to the ancient constitution, to have been the dukes of the four nations, Franks, Swabians, Saxons, Bavarians, to whom had also belonged the four great offices of the imperial household. But of these dukedoms the two first named were now
> Inaocent III, during the con- principaliter spectat regis Bo- test between Philip and Otto IV, mani electio." speaks of '^ principes ad quos
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 253
extinct, and their place and power in the state, as Ch. XIV. well as the household oflSces they had held, had ~ descended upon two principalities of more recent origin, those, namely, of the Palatinate of the Rhine and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. The Saxon duke, though with greatly narrowed dominions, retained his vote and oflSce of arch-marshal, and the claim of his Bavarian compeer would have been equally indisputable had it not so happened that both he and the Palsgrave of the Bhine were mem- bers of the great house of Wittelsbach. That one family should hold two votes out of seven seemed so dangerous to the state that it was made a ground of objection to the Bavarian duke, and gave an opening to the pretensions of the king of Bohemia, who, though not properly a Teutonic prince™, might on the score of rank and power assert himself the equal of any one of the electors. The dispute Qoldm between these rival claimants, as well as all the q^j-^jy rules and requisites of the election, were settled by a.d. 1356. Charles the Fourth in the Golden Bull, thencefor- ward a fundamental law of the Empire. He decided in favour of Bohemia, of which he was then king; fixed Frankfort as the place of election ; named the archbishop of Mentz convener of the electoral col- lege j gave to Bohemia the first, to the Count Palatine the second place among the secular electors. A majority of votes was in all cases to be decisive. As to each electorate there was attached a great
" " Rex BohemiaB non eligit, a writer early in the fourteenth quia non est Teutonicus/' says century.
254 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XIV. office, it was supposed that this was the title by which the vote was possessed ; though it was in truth rather an effect than a cause. The three prelates were archchancellors of Germany, Gaul, and Italy respectively : Bohemia cupbearer, the Pals- grave seneschal. Saxony marshal, and Brandenburg chamberlain".
These arrangements, under which disputed elec- tions became far less frequent, remained undisturbed till A. n. i6i8, when on the breaking out of the Thirty Years^ War the Emperor Ferdinand II by an unwarranted stretch of prerogative deprived the Pals- grave Frederick (king of Bohemia, and husband of Elizabeth, the daughter of James I of England) of
^ The names and offices of the tise of Marsilius PatavinTis, De seven are concisely given in these Imperio Jiomano : — lines, which appear in the trea-
" Moguntinensis, Trevirensis, Coloniensis, QuiHbet Imperii sit Oancellarius horum ; Et Palatinus dapifer, Dux portitor ensis, Marchio preepositus camerse, pincema Bohenius, Hi statuunt dominum cunctis per saecula summum."
It may not be without interest Graf von Mapsburg, in which to place beside this the first the coronation feast of Rudolf stanza of Schiller's ballad, Der is described : —
" Zu Aachen in seiner Kaiserpracht
Im alterthUmUchen Saale, Sass Konig Rudolphs heilige Macht
Beim festlichen Kronungsmahle. Die Speisen trug der Pfalzgraf des Rheins, Es schenkte der Bohme des perlenden Weins,
XJnd alle die Wahler, die Sieben, Wie der Sterne Chor um die Sonne sich stellt, Umstanden geschaftig den Herrscher der Welt,
Die Wiirde des Amtes zu iiben."
It is a poetical license, however, fied at his own rejection, and to bring the Bohemian there, for already meditating war. he was far away at hom^, morti-
THE HOLT ROMAN MMPIRE, 255
«
his electoral vote, and transferred it to his own Ch. XIV. partisan, Maximilian of Bavaria. At the peace oi Eighth Westphalia, the Palsgrave was reinstated as an "^^*^*^^\ eighth elector, Bavaria retaining her place. The sacred number having been once broken through, less scruple was felt in making fiirther changes. In Nmth A.D. 169!^, the Emperor Leopold I conferred a ninth electorate on the house of Brunswick Liineburg, which was then in possession of the duchy of Han- over; and in a. p. 1708, the assent of the Diet thereto was obtained. It was in this way that English kings came to vote at the election of a Roman Emperor.
It is not a little curious that the only potentate who still continues to entitle himself Elector ^ should be one who never did (and of course never can now) join in electing an Emperor, having been under the arrangements of the old Empire a simple Landgrave. In A. D. 1803, Napoleon, among other sweeping changes in the Germanic constitution, procured the extinction of the electorates of Cologne and Treves, annexing them to France, and gave the title of Elector, as the highest after that of king, to the duke of Wiirtemberg, the Margrave of Baden, the Landgrave of Hessen-Cassel, and the archbishop of Salzburg. Three years afterwards the Empire itself anded, and the title became meaningless.
* The electoral prince (Kur- electoral Hesse (Kur-Heasen)
fiirst) of Hessen-Cassel. His from the Grand Duchy (Hessen-
retention of the title has this Darmstadt) and the landgraviate
advantage, that it enables the (Hessen-Homburg). Germans readily to distinguish
2.. THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE,
Ch. AiV. As the Germanic Empire is the most conspicuous example of a monarchy not hereditary that the world has ever seen, it may not be amiss to consider for a moment what light its history throws upon the character of elective monarchy in general, a con- trivance which has always had, and will probably always continue to have, seductions for a certain class of political theorists. Objects of First of all then it deserves to be noticed how mmardiy: difficult, one might almost say how impossible, it how far was found to maintain in practice the elective prin- Germany, ciple. In point 01 law, the imperial throne was Choice of from the tenth century to the nineteenth absolutely thejittest. ^^^^ ^^ ^^^ orthodox Christian candidate. But as
a matter of fact, the competition was confined to a few very powerfiil families, and there was always a strong tendency for the crown to become heredi- tary in some one of these. Thus the Franconian Emperors held it from a.d. 1024 till 1125, the Ho- henstaufen, themselves the heirs of the Franconians, for a century or more ; the house of Luxemburg enjoyed it during three successive reigns, and when in the fifteenth century it fell into the tenacious grasp of the Hapsburgs, they managed to retain it thenceforth (with but one trifling interruption) till it vanished out of nature altogether. Therefore the chief benefit which the scheme of elective sovereignty seems to promise, that of putting the fittest man in the highest place, was but seldom attained, and attained even then rather by good fortune than design.
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE: 257
No such objection can be brought against the Ch. XIV. second ground on which an elective system has jtestramt sometimes been advocated, its operation in mode- o/'^.
«i\. .n sovereign.
ratmg the power of the crown, for this was attained
in the fullest and most ruinous measure. We are reminded of the man in the fable, who opened a sluice to water his garden, and saw his house swept away by the furious torrent. The power of the crown was not moderated but destroyed. Each successful candidate was forced to purchase his title by the sacrifice of rights which had belonged to his predecessors, and must repeat the same shame- ful policy later in his reign to procure the election of his son. Peeling at the same time that his family could not make sure of keeping the throne, he treated it as a life-tenant is apt to treat his estate, seeking only to make out of it the largest present profit. And the electors, aware of the strength of their posi- tion, presumed upon it and abused it to assert an independence such as the nobles of other countries could never have aspired to.
Modem political speculation supposes the method Recognition of appointing a ruler by the votes of his subjects, as ^^^ y^i^ opposed to the system of. hereditary succession, to be an assertion by the people of their own will as the ultimate fountain of authority, an acknowledgment by the prince that he is no more than their minister and deputy. To the theory of the Holy Empire nothing could be more, repugnant. This will best appear when the aspect of the system of election at different epochs in its history is compared with
s
258 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XIV. the corresponding changes in the composition of the electoral body which have been described as in pro- gress from the ninth to the fourteenth century. In very early times, the tribe chose a war chief, who was, even if he belonged to the most noble family, no more than the first among his peers, with a power circumscribed by the will of his subjects. Several ages later, in the tenth and eleventh centuries, the right of choice had passed into the hands of the mag- nates, and the people were only asked to assent. In the same measure had the relation of prince and sub- ject taken a new aspect. We must not expect to find^ in such rude times, any very clear apprehension of the technical quality of the process, and the throne had indeed become for a season so nearly hereditary that the election was often a mere matter of form. But it seems to have been regarded, not as a dele- gation of authority by the nobles and people, with a power of resumption implied, but rather as their subjection of themselves to the monarch who enjoys, as of his own right, a wide and ill-defined preroga- tive. In yet later times, when, as has been shewn above, the assembly of the chieftains and the ap- plauding shout of the host had been superseded by the secret conclave of the seven electoral princes, the strict legal view of election became fully established, and no one was supposed to have any title to the crown except what a majority of votes might confer upon him. Meantime, however, the conception of the imperial oiBce itself had been thoroughly pene- trated by religious ideas, and the fact that the sove-
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE, 259
reign did not, like other princes, reign by hereditary Ch. XIV. right, but by the choice of certain persons, was supposed to be an enhancement and consecration of his dignity. The electors, to draw what may seem Conception a subtle, but is nevertheless a very real distinction, lij^^i selecjtfii, but did-jaaL-Creaiie. They only named the function. person who was to receive what it was not theirs to give. God, say the mediaeval writers, not deigning to interfere visibly in the affairs of this world, has willed that these seven princes of Germany should discharge the function which once belonged to the senate and people of Rome, that of choosing His earthly viceroy in matters temporal. But it is imme- diately from Himself that the authority of this vice- roy comes, and men can have no rel^^tion towards kim except that of obedience. It was in this period, therefore, when the Emperor was in practice the mere nominee of the electors, that the belief in this divine right stood highest, to the complete exclusion of the mutual responsibility of feudalism, and still more of any notion of a devolution of authority from the sovereign people.
Peace and order appeared to be promoted by the General institutions of Charles IV, which removed one fruit- ^^rUe ful cause of civil war. But these seven electoral ^y'spoUcy. princes acquired, with their new privileges, a marked and dangerous predominance in Germany. They were to enjoy full regalian rights in their territories P;
p Goethe, whose imagination given in the second part of i^ai^ was wonderfully attracted by the a sort of fancy sketch of the ori- splendours of the old Empire, has gin of the great offices and the
S 2
260 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XIV. causes were not to be evoked from their courts, save when justice should have been denied : their consent was necessary to all public acts of consequence. Their persons were held to be sacred, and the seven mystic luminaries of the Holy Empire, typified by the seven lamps of the Apocalypse, soon gained much of the Empei'or's hold on popular reverence, as well as that actual power which he lacked. To Charles, who viewed the German Empire much as Rudolf had viewed the Roman, this result came not unforeseen. He saw in his office a means of serving personal ends, and to them, while exalting by endless cere- monies its ideal dignity, deliberately sacrificed what real strength was left. The object which he sought steadily through life was the prosperity of the Bohe- mian kingdom, and the advancement of his own house. In the Golden Bull, whose seal bears the legend, —
" Boma caput mnndi regit oibis frena rotundi^,*'
there is not a word of Rome or of Italy. To Ger- many he was indirectly a benefactor, by the founda- tion of the University of Prague, the mother of all her schools : otherwise her bane. He legalized anarchy, and called it a constitution. The sums expended in obtaining the ratification of the Golden
territorial independence of the granted by the Emperor to the German princes. Two lines ex- electors : — press concisely the fiscal rights
" Dann Steuer, Zins und Beed*, Lehn und Geleit und Zoll, Berg- Salz- und Mtlnz-regal euch angehoren soil."
<i This line is said to be as old as the time of Otto III.
, TEE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 261
Bull, in procuring" the election of his son Wenzel, in Ch. XIV. aggrandizing Bohemia at the expense of Germany, had been amassed by keeping a market in which honours and exemptions, with what lands the crown retained, were put up openly to be bid for. In Italy the Ghibelines saw, with shame and rage, their chief hasten to Rome with a scanty retinue, and return from it as swiftly, at the mandate of an Avignonese ' Pope, halting on his route only to traffic away the last rights of his Empire. The Guelf might cease to hate a power he could despise.
Thus, alike at home and abroad, the German king had become practically powerless by the loss of his feudal privileges, and saw the authority that had once been his parcelled out among a crowd of greedy and tyrannical nobles. Meantime how had it fared with the rights which he claimed by virtue of the imperial crown ?
CHAPTEE XV.
THE EMPIEB AS AN INTEttNATIONAL POWER.
«
CH.XV. That the Roman Empire sm^ived the seemingly
Thetyry of J^Eiortal wound it had received at the era of the Great
the Roman Interregnum, and continued to put forth pretensions
the four- which no one was likely to make good where the
temth<md Hohenstaufen had failed, has been attributed to its
Jijteenth .... . .
centuries, identification with the German kingdom, in: which
some life Wa^ Still left. i>ui this was far from being the onIyT3Tfee. It had not ceased to be upheld in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries by the same singular theory which had in the ninth a^d tentn been strong enough to re-establish it in the West. The character of that theory was indeed somewhat changed, for if not positively less religious, it was less exclusively so. In the days of Charles and Otto, the Empire, in so far as it was anything more than a tradition from times gone by, rested solely upon the belief that with the visible Church there must be coextensive a single Christian state under one head and governor. But now that the Emperor's headship had been repudiated by the Pope, and his interierence in matters of religion denounced as a repetition of the sin of Uzziah; now that the
^
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. -263
memory of mutual injuries had kindled an un- Ch. XV. quenehable hatred between the champions of the ecclesiastical and those of the civil power, it was natural that the latter, while they urged, fervently as ever, the divine sanction given to the imperial office, should at the same time be led to seek some further basis whereon to establish its claims. W h at
that basis was, and how they were guided to it, will best appear when a word or two has been said on the nature of the change that had passed on Europe in the course of the three preceding centuries, and the progress of the human mind during the same period.
Such has been the accumulated wealth of litera- ture, and so rapid the advances of science among us since the close of the Middle Ages, that it is not now possible by any eflPort fully to enter into the feelings with which the relics of antiquity were regarded by those who saw in them their only pos- session. It is indeed true that modem art and literature and philosophy have been produced by the working of new minds upon old materials : that in thought, as in nature, we see no new creation. But with us the old has been transformed and overlaid by the new till its origin is forgotten : to them ancient books were the only standard of taste, the only vehicle of truth, t)ie only stimulus to reflection. Hence it was 'that the most learned man was in those days esteemed the greatest : hence the creative energy of an age was exactly proportioned to its knowledge of and its reverence for the written
264 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XV. monuments of those that had gone before. For until they can look forward, men must look back : till they should have reached the level of the old civilization, the nations of mediaeval Europe must continue to live upon its memories. Over them, as over us, the common dream of all mankind had power; but to them, as to the ancient world, that golden age which seems now to glimmer on the horizon of the future was shrouded in the clouds of the past. It is to the fifteenth and sixteenth cen- turies that we are accustomed to assign that new birth of the human spirit — if it ought not rather to be called a renewal of its strength and quicken- ing of its sluggish life — with which the modern time begins. And the date is well chosen, for it was then first that the transcendently powerful influence of Greece began to work upon the world.
Revival of But it must not be forgotten that for a long time
learning • j.t_ i j t_ • j. • i
andlUeta- previous there had been m progress a great revival
Ure, A.D. Qf learning, and still more of zeal for learniner, I 100-1400. . . .
which being caused by and directed towards the
literature and institutions of Rome, might fitly be
called the Roman Renaissance. The twelfth century
saw this revival begin with that passionate study of
the legislation of Justinian, whose influence on the
doctrines of imperial prerogative has been noticed
already. The thirteenth witnessed the rapid spread
of the scholastic philosophy, a body of systems most
alien, both in subject and manner, to anything that
had arisen among the ancients, yet one to whose
development Greek metaphysics and the theology of
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 265
the Latin fathers had largely contributed^ and the Ch. XV. spirit of whose reasonings was far more free than the presumed orthodoxy of its conclusions suffered to appear. In the fourteenth century there arose in Italy the first great masters of painting and song ; and the literature of the new languages, springing into the fulness of life in the Divina Commedia, adorned not long after by the names of Petrarch and Chaucer, assumed at once its place as a great and ever-growing power in the affairs of men.
Now, along with the literary revival, partly caused Growing by, partly causing it, there had been also a wonderful -^^^^^ ^^ stirring and uprising in the mind of Europe. The yoke of church authority still pressed heavily on the souls of men ; yet some had been found to shake it off, and many more murmured in secret. The ten- dency was one which shewed itself in various and sometimes apparently opposite directions. The revolt of the Albigenses, the spread of the Cathari and other so-called heretics, the excitement created by the writings of Wickliffe and Huss, witnessed to the fearlessness wherewith it could assail the dominant theology. It was present, however skilfully dis- guised, among those scholastic doctors who busied themselves with proving by natural reason the dogmas of the Church : for the power which can forge fetters can also break them. It took a form more dangerous because of a more direct application to facts, in the attacks, so often repeated, frojn Arnold of Brescia downwards, upon the wealth and
266 TEE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XV. corruptions of the clergy, and above all of the papal iTifluence court. For the agitation was not merely speculative.
of thought There was befirinnine: to be a direct and rational
upon the , . .
arrange- interest in life, a power of -applying thought to prac-
^^^^Jf tical ends, which had not been seen before. Man^s life among his fellows was no longer a mere wild beast struggle ; man's soul no more, as it had been, the victim of ungoverned passion, whether it was awed by supernatural terrors or captivated by ex- amples of surpassing holiness. Manners were still rude, and governments unsettled; but society was learning to organize itself upon fixed principles ; to recognize, however faintly, the value of order^ industry, equality; to adapt means to ends, and conceive of the common good as the proper end of its own existence. In a word. Politics had begun to exist, and with them there had appeared the first of a class of persons whom friends and enemies may both, though with difierent meanings, call ideal politicians; men who, however various have been the doctrines they have held, however impracticable some of the plans they have advanced, have been nevertheless alike in their devotion to the highest interests of humanity, and have frequently been derided as theorists in their own age to be honoured as the prophets and teachers of the next.
Now it was towards the Roman Empire that the hopes and sympathies of these political speculators as well as of the jurists and poets of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were constantly directed. The cause may be gathered from the circumstances of
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 267
the tiine. The most remarkable event in the history Ch. XV. of the last three hundred years had been the forma- Separation tion of nationalities, each distinguished by a peculiar ^^,^^f^' language and character, and by steadily increasing rope into differences of habits and institutions. And as upon Jj^*^^ . this national basis there had been in most cases consequent established strong monarchies, Europe was broken i^emi-**" up into disconnected bodies, and the cherished Honal scheme of a united Christian state appeared less likely than ever to be realized. Nor was this all. Sometimes through race-hatred, more often by the jealousy and ambition of their sovereigns, these countries were constantly involved in war with one another, violating on a larger scale and with more destructive results than in time past the peace of the reUgious community; while each of them was at the same time torn within by frequent insur- rections, and desolated by long and bloody civil wars. The new nationalities were too fully formed to allow the hope that by their extinction a remedy might be applied to these evils. They had grown up in spite of the Empire and the Church, and were not likely to yield in their strength what they had won in tfieir weakness. But it stiUappeared pos- sible to soften, if not to overcome, their antagonism. What might not be looked tor t'rolii the erection of a presiding power common to all Europe, a power which while it should oversee the internal concerns of each country, not dethroning the king, but treating him as an hereditary viceroy, should be more especially charged to prevent strife between
268 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE,
Ch. XV. kingdoms, and to maintain the public order of Europe by being not only the fountain of inter- national law but also the judge in its causes and the enforcer of its sentences ? ThePopei To such a position had the Popes aspired. They mxHonal ^^®^® indeed excellently fitted for it by the respect Jvdgea. which the sacredness of their office commanded; by their control of the tremendous weapons of excom- munication and interdict ; above all, by their exemp- tion from those narrowing influences of place, or blood, or personal interest, which it would be their chiefest duty to resist in others. And there had been pontiffs whose fearlessness and justice were worthy of their exalted office, and whose interference was gratefully remembered by those who found no other helpers. Nevertheless, judging the Papacy by its conduct as a whole, it had been tried and found wanting. Even when its throne stood firmest and its purposes were most pure, one motive had always biassed its decisions — a partiality to the most sub- missive. During the greater part of the fourteenth century it was at Avignon the willing tool of France : in the pursuit of a temporal principality it had mingled in and been contaminated by the un- hallowed politics of Italy; its supreme council, the college of cardinals, was distracted by the intrigues of two bitterly hostile factions. And while the power of the Popes had declined steadily, though silently, since the days of Boniface the Eighth, the insolence of the great prelates and the vices of the inferior clergy had provoked throughout Latin
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 269
Christendom a reaction agaihst the pretensions of Ch. XV. all sacerdotal authority. As there is no theory at first sight more attractive than that which enjbrusts all government to a supreme spiritual power, which, knowing what is best for man, shall lead him to his true good by appealing to the highest principles of his nature ; so there is no disappointment more bitter than that of those who find that the holiest office may be polluted by the lusts and passions of its holder ; that craft and hypocrisy lead while fana- ticism follows; that here too, as in so much else, the corruption of the best is worst. Some such disappointment there was in Europe now, and with it a certain disposition to look with favour on the secular power : a wish to escape from the unhealthy atmosphere of clerical despotism to the rule of posi- tive law, harsher it might be, yet surely less corrupt- ing. Espousing the cause of the Roman Empire as the chief opponent of priestly claims, this tendency found it, with shrunken territory and diminished resources, fitter in some respects for the office, of an international judge and mediator than it had been as a great national power. ' J^'or though far less widely active, it was losing that local character which was fast gathering round the Papacy. With feudal rights no longer enforcible, and removed, except in his pa- trimonial lands, from direct contact with the subject, the Emperor was not, as heretofore, conspicuously a German king, and occupied an ideal position far less marred by the incongruous accidents of birth and training, of national and dynastic interests.
270 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XV. To that position three cardinal duties were at- Diuies at- ^^<^^®^- He who held it must typify spiritual unity, tribviedto niust preserve peace, must be a fountain of that by
the Empire -i • i i • • n j
by the which alone among impertect men peace is pre- d^eloped served and restored, law and justice. Tlie first of these three objects was sought not only on religious grounds, but also from that longing for a wider brotherhood of humanity towards which, ever since the barrier between Jew and Gentile, Greek and barbarian, was broken down, the aspirations of the higher minds of the world have been constantly directed. Placed in the midst of Europe, the Emperor was to bind its tribes into one body, reminding them of their common faith, their com- mon blood, their common interest in each other's w:elfare. And he was . therefore above all things, professing indeed to be upon earth the representative of the Prince of Peace, bound to listen to complaints, and redress the injuries inflicted by sovereigns or people upon each* other; to punish offenders against the public order of Christendom ; to maintain through the world, looking down as from a serene height upon the schemes and quarrels of meaner potentates, that supreme good without which neither arts nor letters, nor the gentler virtues of life, can rise and flourish. The mediaeval Empire was in its essence what the modern despotisms that mimic it profess themselves : the Empire was peace * : the oldest and noblest title of its head was ^^ Imperator
* See esp. -^gidi, Der Fursten- den, and the passages by him rath nach dem Luneviller Frie- quoted.
TEE HOL 7 ROMA N EMPIRE. 27 1
pacificus */' And that he might be the peacemaker, Ch. XV. he must be the expounder of justice and the author of its concrete embodiment, positive law ; chief legis- lator and supreme judge of appeal, like his prede- cessor the compiler of the Corpus Juris, the one and only source of all legitimate authority. In this sense, as governor and administrator, not as owner, is he, in the words of the jurists. Lord of the world; not that its soil belongs to him in the same sense in which the soil of France and England belongs to their respected kings : he is the steward of Him who has received the heathen for his possession and the uttermost parts of the earth for his inheritance. It is, therefore, by him alone that the idea of pure right, acquired not by force but by legitimate devo- lution from those whom God himself had set up, is visibly expressed upon earth. To find an external
^ The archbishop of Mentz ad- animo anuati conentur nedum
dresses Conrad II on his election hnmana, verum etiam divina
thus: "Deus quum a te multa prsecepta, quibus iubetur qnod
reqnirat turn hoc potissimum omnis anima Bomanorum prin-
desiderat nt facias indicium et cipi sit subiecta, scelestissimis
institiam et pacem.*' So Pope facinoribns et rebellionibus de-
Urban TV writes to Bichard : moliri." &c. — Pertz, M, Q. H.,
" Ut constematis Imperii Bo- legg. ii. p. 544.
mani inimicis, in pacis pulchri- See also a curious passage in
tudine sedeat populus Christianus the Life of St. Adalbert, describ-
et requie opulenta quiescat." ing the beginning of the reign at
(Quoted by ^gidi.) Compare Borne of the Emperor Otto III,
also the "Edictum de crimine and his cousin and nominee Pope
laessB Maiestatis " issued by Henry Gregory V : " Lsetantur cum pri-
VII in Italy : '* Ad reprimenda matibus minores civitatis : cnm
multonmi facinora qui ruptis to- afi9icto paupere exultant agmina
tins debitse fidelitiatis habenis viduarum, quia novus imperator
adversus Bomanum imperium, dat iura populis ; dat iura novus
in cuius tranquillitate totius or- papa." bis regularitas requiescit, hostili
272 TBK • ' .wF ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XV. and positive W^ .< ior that idea is a problem wliicli it lias at all limes been more easy to evade than to solve, and one peculiarly distressing to those who could neither explain the phenomena of society by reducing it to its original principles, nor inquire historically how its existing arrangements had grown Divine up. Hence the attempt to represent human govern- ^If/J ment as an emanation from divine : a view from
Jimperor.
which all the similar but far less logically consistent doctrines of divine right which have prevailed in later times are borrowed. As has been said already, there is not a trace of the notion that the Emperor reigns by an hereditary right of his own or by the will of the people, for such a theory would have seemed to the men of the middle ages an absurd and wicked perversion of the true order. Nor do his powers come to him from those who choose him, but from God, who uses the electoral princes as mere instruments of nomination. Having such an origin, his rights exist irrespective of their actual exercise, and no voluntary abandonment, not even an express grant, can impair them. Boniface the Eighth*^ reminds the king of France, and imperialist lawyers till the seventeenth century repeated the claim, that he, like other princes, is of right and must ever
^ " Imperator est monarcha niface VIII, quoted by ^gidi.
onmium regum et principum ter- It is curious to compare -with
renorum ..... nee insurgat this the words addressed nearly
superbia Gallicorum quae dicat five centuries earlier by Pope
quod non recognoscit superiorem, John VIII to Lewis, king of
mentiuntur, quia de iure sunt et Bavaria : ** Si sumpseritis Boma-
esse debent sub rege Romanorum num imperium, omnia regna vo-
et Iraperatore." — Speech of Bo- bis subiecta existent." ^
THE HOLY ROMAF EMPIRE. 273
remain subject to the Boman Emperor. And the Ch. XV. sovereigns of Europe long continued to address him in language, and yield to him a precedence, which admitted the inferiority of their own position ^.
There was in this theory nothing that was absurd, though much that was impracticable. The ideas on which it rested are still unapproached in grandeur and simplicity, still as far in advance of the average thought of Europe and as unlikely to find men or nations fit to apply them, as when they were pro- mulgated five hundred years ago. The practical evil which the establishment of such a universal monarchy was intended to meet, that of wars and hardly less ruinous preparations for war between the states of Europe, remains what it was then. The remedy which mediaeval theory proposed has been in some measure applied by the construction and reception of international law; the greater difficulty of erecting a tribunal to arbitrate and decide, with the power of enforcing its decisions, is as far from a solution as ever.
It is easy to see how it was to the Boman Emperor, and to him only, that the duties and privileges above
^ So Alfonso, king of Naples, ea in expeditione locum non gra-
writes to Frederick III: "Nos varer ex officio cedere." — Quoted
reges onmes debemus reveren- by j^gidi. For a long time no
tiam Imperatori, tanquam summo European sovereign save the
regi, qui ^st Caput et Dux re- Emperor ventured to use the
gum." — Quoted by Pfeffinger, title of "Majesty." The impe-
VUriarius illuLstratvSf i.$'jg. And rial chancery conceded it in
Francis I (of France), speaking 1633 to the kings of England
of a proposed combined expedi- and Sweden ; in 1641 to the
tion against the Turks, says, king of France. — Zedler, Uni'
'' Gaesari nihilominus principem versal Lexikon, 8. v. Majestat.
74 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
:. KY, mentioned oonld be attribnted. Being Boman^ be ^ was of no nation^ and therefore fittest to jndge be-
•'.( *n
'.^re ^ tween contending states^ and appease the animosities teniatumal of lace. His was the imperial tongue of Bome^ not ^'^*^"^' only the vehicle of religion and law, bat also, since no other was understood everywhere in Europe, the necessary medium of diplomatic intercourse. As there was no Church but the Holy Boman Church, and he its temporal head, it was by him that the communion of the saints in its outward form was represented, and to his keeping that the sanctity of peace must be en- trusted. As direct heir of those who from Julius to Justinian had shaped ihe existing law of Europe^, he was, so to speak, legality personified^: the only sovereign on earth who, being possessed of power by an unimpeachable title, could by his grant confer upon others rights equally valid. And as he daimed to perpetuate the greatest political system the world had known, a system which still moves the wonder of those who see before their eyes empires as much wider than the Boman as ihej are less symmetrical, and whose vast and complex machinery far surpassed anything the fourteenth century possessed or could hope to establish, it was not strange that he and his government should be taken as the ideal of a perfect monarch and a perfect state.
Of the many applications and illustrations of these
* For with the progress of in Germany, giving way to the
society and the growth of com- civil law.
merce the old feudal customs * "Imperator est animata lex
were through the greater part of in terris." — Quoted by Von Bau-
Western Europe, and especially mer^ v. 8i.
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 276
doctrines which mediseyal documents furnish^ it will ch. XV. suffice to adduce two or three. No imperial privilege jj^ was prized more highly than the power of creating trcaions. kings^ for there was none which raised the Emperor RigM of so much above them. In this, as in other inter- %^^^ national concerns, the Pope soon began to claim a jurisdiction, at first concurrent, then separate and in- dependent. But the older and more reasonable view assigned it, as a part of secular authority, to the Emperor; and it was from him that the rulers of Burgundy, Bohemia, Hungary, perhaps Poland and Denmark, received the regal title*. The prerogative was his in the same manner in which tiiat of confer- ring titles is still held to belong to the sovereign in every modem kingdom. And so when Charles the Bold, last duke of French Burgundy, proposed to consolidate his wide dominions into a kingdom, it was from Frederick III that he sought permission to do so. The Emperor, however, was greedy and sus- picious, the Duke uncompliant; and when Frederick found that terms could not be arranged between them, he stole away suddenly, and left Charles to carry back, with ill-concealed mortification, the crown and sceptre which he had brought ready-made to the place of interview.
8 Thus we are told of the Em- retur dominari/' — Regin, Chrovu
peror Charles the Bald, when he Frederick II made his son Enzio
confiimed the election of Boso, king of Sardinia and erected the
king of Burgundy and Provence, duchy of Austria into a kingdom,
''Dedit Bosoni Provinciam (sc. although for some reason the titlo
Carolus Oalvus), et corona in ver^ seems never to have been used ;
tice capitis imposita^ eum regem and Lewis lY gave to Humbert
appellari iussit, ut more prisco- of Dauphin^ the title of King of
rum imperatorum regibus vide- Yienne, a.d. i 336.
T %
276 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE,
Ch. XV. In the same manner, as representing what was Chivalry, common to and valid throughout all Europe, nobility, and more particularly knighthood, centred in the Em- pire. The great orders of Chivalry were international institutions, whose members having consecrated them- selves a military priesthood, had no longer any country of their own, and could therefore be subject to no one save the Emperor and the Pope. For knighthood was constructed on the analogy of priesthood, and knights were conceived of as being to the world in its secular aspect exactly what priests, and more especially the monastic orders, were to it in its reli- gious aspect : to the one body was given the sword of the flesh, to the other the sword of the spirit; each was universal, each had its autocratic head^. Singularly, too, were these notions brought into har- mony with the feudal polity. Csesar was lord para- mount of the world : its countries great fiefs whose kings were his tenants in chief, the suitors of his court, owing to him homage, fealty, and military service against the infidel.
One illustration more of the way in which the empire was held to be something of and for all mankind, cannot be omitted. Although from the practical union of the imperial with the German throne none but Germans were chosen to fill it*, it
^ It is probably for this reason torff, Dissertatio ad Auream BuU
tbat the Ordo Romanus directs lam ; and Augastinus Stenchns,
the Emperor and Empress to be De Imperio Romano ; quoted by
crowned (in St. Peter's) at the Marquard Freher. It was keenly
altar of St. Maurice, the patron debated, while Charles Y and
saint of knighthood. Francis I (of France) were rival
^ See especially G«rlach Buz- candidates, whether any one but
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 277
remained in point of law absolutely free from all re- 6h. XV. strictions of country or birth. In an age of the most Persons intense aristocratic exclusiveness. the highest office in ^^9*^^ ^
. . Emperors.
the world was the only one open to all Chnstians. The old writers, after debating at length the qualifi- cations that are or may be desirable in an Emperor, and relating how in pagan times Gauls and Spaniards, Moors and Fannonians, were thought worthy of the purple, decide that two things, and no more, are re- quired of the candidate for Empire : he must be free- born, and he must be orthodox^.
It is not without a certain surprise that we see those who were engaged in the study of ancient letters, or felt indirectly their stimulus, embrace so fervently the cause of the Roman Empire. Still more
a German was eligible. By birth trary be proved. Of course when Charles was either a Spaniard or heresy was rife it went hard with a Fleming ; but this difficulty his suspected men, unless they could partisans avoided by holding that either clear themselves or submit he had been, according to the to recant. But no one was re- civil law, in potestale of Maximi- quired to pledge himself before- lian his grandfather. However, hand, as a qualification for any to say nothing of the Guidos and office, to certain doctrines. And Berengars of earlier days, the thus, important as an Emperor's examples of Itichard and Alfonso orthodoxy was, he does not ap- are conclusive as to the eligibility pear to have been subjected to of others than Germans. Edward any test, although the Pope pre- III of England was, as has been tended to the right of catechizing said; actually elected ; Henry him in the faith and rejecting YIU was a candidate. And him if unsound. In the Ordo attempts were frequently made JRomanus we find a long series of to elect the kings of France. questions which the Pontiff was ^ The mediaeval practice seems to administer, but it does not ap- to have been that which still pear, and is in the highest degree prevails in the Koman Catholic unlikely, that such a programme Church : to presume the doctri- was ever carried out. nal orthodoxy and external con- The charge of heresy was one f ormity of every citizen, whether of the weapons used with most lay or clerical, until the con- effect against Frederick II.
278 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XV.' difficult is it to estimate the respective influence The Em- exerted by each of the three revivals which it has been pire and attempted to distin^ruish. The spirit of the ancient
the new jt o x
leammg. world by which the men who led these movements fancied themselves animated^ was in truth a pa^n^ or at least a strongly secular spirit, in many respects inconsistent with the associations which gathered round the imperial office. And this hostility did not fail to shew itself when at the beginning of the six- teenth century, in the fulness of the Renaissance^ a direct and for the time irresistible sway was exer- cised by the art and literature of Greece, when the mythology of Euripides and Ovid supplanted that which had fired the imagination of Dante and peopled the visions of St. Francis; when men forsook the imagre of the saint in the cathedral for the statue of the nymph in the garden ; when the uncouth jargon of scholastic theology was equally distasteful to the scholars who formed their style upon Cicero and the philosophers who drew their inspiration from Plato. That meanwhile the admirers of antiquity did ally themselves with the defenders of the Empire, was due partly indeed to the false notions that were enter- tained regarding the early Caesars, yet still more to the common hostility of both sects to the Papacy. It was as successor of old Rome, and by virtue of her traditions, that the Holy See had established so wide a dominion ; yet no sooner did Arnold of Brescia and his republicans arise, claiming libertj'^ in the name of the ancient constitution of the republic, than they found in the Popes their bitterest foes, and turned
THE HOLT BOM AN EMPIRE. 279
for help to the secular monarch against the clergy. Ch. XV. With similar aversion did the Romish court view the revived study of the ancient jurisprudence, so soon as it became, in the hands of the school of Bologna and afterwards of the jurists of France, a power able to assert its independence and resist ecclesiastical pre- tensions. In the ninth century. Pope Nicholas the Krst had himself judged in the famous case of Teut- berga, wife of Lothar, according to the civil law : in the thirteenth, his successors^ forbade its study, and the canonists strove to expel it from Europe™. And as the current of educated opinion among the laity was beginning, however imperceptibly at first, to set against sacerdotal tyranny, it followed that the Em- pire would find sympathy in any effort it could make to regain its lost position. Thus the Emperors be- came, or might have become had they seen the great- ness of the opportunity and been strong enough to improve it, the exponents and guides of the political movement, the pioneers, in part at least, of the Beformation. But the revival came too late to arrest, if not to adorn, the decline of their oflSce. The growth of a national sentiment in the several countries of Europe, which had already gone too far to be arrested, and was urged on by forces far stronger than the theories of Catholic unity which opposed it, imprinted on the resistance to papal usurpation, and even on the instincts of political freedom, that form
^ Honorius II in 1229 forbade still more sweeping probibition. it to be studied or taught in the " See Von Savigny, History of
University of Paris. Innocent Roman Law in the Middle Ages,
IV published some years later a vol. iii. pp. 81, 341-347.
280 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XV. of narrowly local patriotism which they still retain. Thedoc' ^^ ^^^ hardly be said that upon any occasion^ except trine of the Convoking of the council of Constance by Sigis- pire^srigUs mund, did the Emperor appear filling a truly inter- andfunc- national place. For the most part he exerted in the
twns never , , . **■
carried out politics of Europe no influence greater than that of mfact, other princes. In actual resources he stood below the kings of France and England^ far below his vassals the Visconti of Milan". Yet this helplessness, such was men^s faith or their timidity, and such their un- willingness to make prejudice bend to facts, did not prevent his dignity from being extolled in the most sonorous language by writers whose imaginations were enthralled by the halo of traditional glory which surrounded it. Attitude We are thus brought back to ask. What was the %M^ connection between imperiaKsm and the Hterary re- vival?
To moderns who think of the Roman Empire as the heathen persecuting power, it is strange to find it depicted as the model of a Christian commonwealth. It is stranger still that the study of antiquity should have made men advocates of arbitrary power. Demo- cratic Athens, oligarchic Rome, suggest to us Pericles and Brutus : the moderns who have striven to catch their spirit have been men like Algernon Sydney, and Yergniaud, and Shelley. The explanation is the same in both cases®. The ancient world was known to the
^ Charles the Bold of Bur- he sought the regal title,
gundy was a potentate incom- ^ Sismondi, Jlepftbliques Jto-
parably stronger than the Em- liennes, iv. chap, zxyii. peror Frederick III from whom
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 281
earlier middle ages by tradition, freshest for what Ch. XV. was latest, and by the authors of the Empire. Both presented to them the picture of a mighty despotism and a civilization brilliant far beyond their own. Writings of the fourth and fifth centuries, unfamiliar to us, were to them authorities as high as Tacitus or Livy; yet Virgil and Horace too had sung the praises of the first and wisest of the Emperors. To the enthusiasts of poetiy and law, Rome meant uni- versal monarchy P; to those of religion, her name called up the undimmed radiano^ of the Church under Sylvester and Constantine. Petrarch, the Petrarch, apostle of the dawning Renaissance, is excited by the least attempt to revive even the shadow of impe- rial greatness : as he had hailed Rienzi, he welcomes Charles IV into Italy> and execrates his departure. The following passage is taken from his letter to the Roman people asking them to receive back Rienzi : — '^When was there ever such peace, such tranquillity, such justice, such honour paid to virtue, such rewards distributed to the good and punishments to the bad, when was ever the state so wisely guided, as in the time when the world had obtained one head, and that head Rome ; the very time wherein God deigned to be bom of a virgin and dwell upon earth. To every single body there has been given a head; the whole world therefore also, which is called by the poet a great body, ought to be content with oiie temporal head. For every two-headed animal is monstrous; how much more horrible and hideous a portent must
P See Dante, Paradiso, canto vi.
282 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XV. be a creature with a thousand different heads, biting and fighting against one another ! If, however, it is necessary that there be more heads than one, it is nevertheless evident that there ought to be one to restrain all and preside over all, that so the peace of the whole body may abide unshaken. Assuredly both in heaven and in earth the sovereignty of one has always been best/^
Dcmte, His passion for the heroism of Roman conquest and
the ordered peace to which it brought the world, is the centre of Dante^s political hopes : he is no more an exiled Ghibeline, but a patriot whose fervid ima- gination sees a nation arise regenerate at the touch of its rightful lord. Italy, the spoil of so many Teu- tonic conquerors, is the garden of the Empire which Henry is to redeem: Rome the mourning widow, whom Albert is denounced for neglecting^. Passing through purgatory, the poet sees Rudolf of Haps- burgh seated gloomily apart, mourning his sin in that he left unhealed the wounds of Italy'. In the deepest pit of hell^s ninth circle lie? Lucifer, huge, three-headed; in each mouth a sinner whom he crunches between his teeth, in one mouth Iscariot the traitor to Christ, in the others the two traitors to the first Emperor of Rome, Brutus and Cassius". To multiply illustrations from other parts of the poena would be an endless task ; for the idea is ever present
1 " Vieni a veder la tua Roma, che piagne Yedova, sola, e di e notte chiama : Cesare mio, perchfe noD m' accompagne ?"
Purgatorioy canto vi.
' Pwrgatmno, canto vii, ■ Inferno^ canto xxxiv.
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 283
in Dante^s mind^ and displays itself in a hundred un- Ch. XV. expected forms. Virgil himself is selected to be the guide of the pilgrim through hell and purgatory, not so much as being the great poet of antiquity, as be- cause he ^^ was bom under Julius and lived beneath the good Augustus /^ because he was divinely charged to sing of the Empire^s earliest and brightest glories. Strange, that the shame of one age should be the glory of another. For VirgiFs melancholy panegyrics upon the destroyer of the republic are no more like Dante's appeals to the coming saviour of Italy than is Caesar Octavianus to Henry count of Luxemburg.
The visionary zeal of the man of letters was Of the seconded by the more sober devotion of the lawyer^ Conqueror, theologian, and jurist, Justinian is a hero greater than either Julius or Constantine, for his en- during work bears him witness. Absolutism was the civilian's creed* : the phrases ^^legibus solutus,'' ^^lex regia,'' whatever else tended in the same direction, were taken^ to express the prerogative of him whose official style of Augustus, as well as the vernacular name of ^^ Kaiser,'^ designated the legitimate successor of the compiler of the Corpus Juris. Since it was upon that legitimacy that his claim to be the fountain of law rested, no pains were spared to seek out and ob- serve every custom and precedent by which old Rome seemed to be connected with her representative.
Of the many instances that might be collected, it
* Not that the doctors of the Ghibelines among the jurists of
civil law were necessarily poli- Bologna. — JRoman La/io in the
tical partisans of the Emperors. Middle Ages, vol. iii. p. 80.
Savigny says that there were on » In some cases mistaken, the contrary more Guelfs than
284 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XV. would be tedious to enumerate more than a few. The Imitor oflBxjes of the imperial household, instituted by Con- ^^D^"^ stantine the Great, were attached to the noblest
old Rome. « ., . « ^
families of Germany. The Emperor and Empress, before their coronation at Bome, were lodged in the chambers called those of Augustus and Livia*; a bare sword was bome before them by the praetorian prefect ; their processions were adorned by the stand- ards, eagles wolves and dragons, which had figured in the train of Hadrian or Theodosius^. The con- stant title of the Emperor himself, according to the style introduced by Probus, was '^ semper Augustus,^' or '^perpetuus Augustus,'' which erring etymology translated " at all times increaser of the Empire '.'' Edicts issued by a Franconian or Swabian sovereign were inserted as Novels* in the Corpus Juris, in the latest editions of which custom still allows them a place. The pontificatus maodmus of his pagan prede»- cessors was supposed to be preserved by the admission of each Emperor as a canon of St. Peter's at Rome and St. Mary's at Aachen^. Sometimes we even find him talking of his consulship^. Annalists invariably
* 'Pa,\gra,ve,NomiandyandEng' vote as dngvZi or as a collegium^ land, vol. ii. (of Otto and Adel- is 'solved by shewing that they held). The^Ordo Romanus talks have stepped into the place of of a '* Camera lulisB*' in the the senate and people of Bome, Lateran palace, reserved fur the whose duty it was to choose the Empress. Emperor, though (it is nali^y
y See notes to Chron. Casin. in added) the soldiers sometimes Muratori, 8, R. I. iv. 515. usurped it. — Peter de Andlo, De
* Zu aller Zeiten Mehrer des Imperio Romano.
Reichs. *> Thus Charles, in a capitulary
* Novdlce ConstittUiones. added to a revised edition of the ^ MarquardFreher. Theques- Lombard law issued in a.d. 801,
tion whether the seven electors says, "Anno consulatus nostri
THE HOLT EOMAN EMPIRE. 285
number 4be place of each sovereign from Augpiistus Ch. XV. downwards *. The notion of an uninterrupted sueces- sion, which moves the stranger's wondering smile as he sees ranged round the magnificent Golden Hall of Augsburg the portraits of the Caesars, laurelled, helmeted, and periwigged, from Julius the conqueror of Gaul to Joseph the partitioner of Poland, was to those generations not an article of faith only because its denial was inconceivable.
And all this historical antiquarianism, as one might JRevermce call it, which gathers round the Empire, is but one^^^ insttoce, though the most striking, of that esLger phrases in wish to cling to the old forms, use the old phrases, ^g^^ and preserve the old institutions to which the annals of mediaeval Europe bear witness. It appears even in trivial expressions, as when a monkish chronicler sajs of evil bishops deposed, Tribu moti sunt, or talks of the ^^ senate and people of the Franks,^' when he means a council of chiefs surrounded by a crowd of half-naked warriors. So throughout Europe charters and edicts were drawn up on Roman precedents ; the trade-guilds, though often traceable to a difierent source, represented the old collegia; villenage was the ofifepring of the system of coloni under the later Empire. Even in remote Britain, the Teutonic inva- ders used Roman ensigns, and stamped their coins #ith Roman devices; called themselves '^Basileis^'
primo.** So Otto III calls him- from Augustus. Some chroni-
self " Consul Senatus populique clers call Otto the Great Otto II,
Bomani." counting in Salvius Otho, the
^ Francis II, the last Emperor, successor of Galba. was one hundred and twentieth
286 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XV. and '^Augusti®/^ Especially did the cities perpetuate Rome through her most lasting boon to the con- quered, municipal self-government; those of later origin emulating in their adherence to antique style others who, like Nismes and Cologne, Ziirich and Augsburg, could trace back their institutions to the colonice and municipia of the first centuries. On the walls and gates of hoary Niimberg^ the traveller still sees emblazoned the imperial eagle, with the words '^ Senatus populusque Norimbergensis,'' and is borne in thought from the quiet provincial town of to-day to the stirring republic of the middle ages : thence to the Forum and the Capitol of her greater proto- type. For, in truth, through all that period which we call the Dark and Middle Ages men's minds were possessed by the belief that all things continued as they were from the beginning, that no chasm never to be recrossed lay between them and that ancient world to which they had not ceased to look back. We who are centuries removed, can see that there had passed a great and wonderful change upon thought, and art, and literature, and politics, and society itself: a change whose best illustration is to be found in the process whereby there arose out of the primitive basilica the Romanesque cathedral, and from it in turn the endless varieties of Gothic. But so gradual was the change that each generation felt it passing
® See p. 49 and note to p. 157. from the cities to rural comina-
' Ntimberg herself was not of nitiea like some of the Swiss can-
Koman foundation. But this tons. Thus we find "Senatua
makes the imitation all the more populusque IJronensis;" curious. The &shion even passed
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 287
over them no more than a man feels that perpetual Ch. XV. transformation by which his body is renewed from Ahamce of year to year ; while the few who had learning enough ^^ *<^«* «/ to study antiquity through its contemporary records, ^ogrm. were prevented by the utter want of criticism and of that which we call historical feeling, from seeing how prodigious was the contrast between themselves and those whom they admired. There is nothing more modem than the critical spirit which dwells upon the difference between the minds of men in one age and in another ; which endeavours to make each age its own interpreter, and judge what it did or produced by a relative standard. Such a spirit was, before the last century or two, wholly foreign to art as well as to metaphysics. The converse and the parallel of the fashion of calling mediaeval offices by Roman names, and supposing them therefore the same, is to be found in those old German pictures of the siege of Carthage or the battle of Poms and Alexander, where in the foreground two armies of knights, mailed and mounted, are charging each other like Crusaders, lance in rest, while behind, through the smoke of cannon, loom out the Gothic spires and towers of the beleaguered city. And thus, when we remember that the notion of progress and developement, and of change as the necessary condition thereof, was unwel- come or unknown in medisBval times, we may better understand, though we do not cease to wonder, how men, never doubting that the political system of antiquity had descended to them, modified indeed yet in substance the same, should have believed that
288 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Oh. XV. the Frank, the Saxon, and the Swabian ruled all Europe by a right which seems to us not less fan- tastic than that fabled charter whereby Alexander the Great^f bequeathed his Empire to the Slavic race for the love of Roxolana.
It is a part of that perpetual contradiction of which
; the history of the Middle Ages is full, that this belief
I had hardly any influence on practical politics. The
1 more abjectly helpless the Emperor becomes, so much
\ the more sonorous is the language in which the
I dignity of his crown is described. His power, we
are told, is eternal, the provinces having resumed
their allegiance after the barbarian irruptions^ ; it is
incapable of diminution or injury : exemptions and
grants by him, so far as they tend to limit his own
prerogative, are invalid*: all Christendom is still of
right subject to ^im, though it may contumaciously
refuse obedience '^. The sovereigns of Europe are
solemnly warned that they are resisting the power
8 See Palgrave, Normand/y and desnnt esse cives Romani, per ea
England, i. p. 379. quae dicta sunt. Et per hoc om-
^ j^neas Sylvius, Be Ortu et nes gentes quae obediunt S. matri
Authoritate Imperii Bomani, ecclesise sunt de populo Komano.
^ Thus some civilians held Con- Et forte si quis diceret dominum
stantine's Donation null ; but the Imperatorem non esse dominmn
canonists, we are told, were clear et monarcham totius orbis, easet
as to its legality. haereticus, quia diceret contra de-
^ '*Et idem dico de istis aliis terminationem ecclesise et textum regibus et principibus, qui negant S. evangelii, dum dicit, * Ezivit se esse subditos regi Bomanoram, edictum a Csssare Augusto ut de- nt rex Francise, Anglise, et simi- scriberetur universus orbis.* Ita les. Si enim fatentur ipsum esse et recognovit Christus Impera- Dominum universalem, licet ab torem ut dominum." — ^Bartolus, illo universali domino se subtra- Commentary on the Pa/ndect9, hant ex privilegio, vel ex pr«- xlviii. i. 24 ; De Captivis et 8!3riptione vel consimili, non ergo postliminio reversis.
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 229
ordained of God^. No laws can bind the Emperor, Ch. XV. though he may choose to live according to them : no court can judge him, though he may condescend to be sued in his own; none may presume to arraign the conduct or question the motives of him who is answerable only to God °*. So writes iSEneas Sylvius, \ while Frederick the Third, chased from his capital by \ the Hungarians, is wandering from convent to con- \ vent, an imperial beggar; while the princes, whom ( his subserviency to the Pope has driven into rebellion, I are offering the imperial crown to Podiebrad the Bohemian king.
But the career of Henry the Seventh in Italy is Hmry VII, the most remarkable illustration of the Emperor's ^fi'J^^ " position : and imperialist doctrines are set forth most strikingly in the treatise which the greatest spirit of the age wrote to herald the advent of that hero, the De MonarcMa of Dante. Rudolf, Adolf of Nassau, Albert of Hapsburg, none of them crossed the Alps or attempted to aid the Italian Ghibelines who battled away in the name of their throne. Con-
1 Peter de Andlo, multis locis in angustum gubemacula sua
(see esp. cap. viii.), and other contraxit undique, tamen de in-
writings of the time. Cf. Dante's yiolabili iure fluctus Amphitritis
letter to Henry VII: "Eoma- attingens vix ab inutiU unda
norum potestas nee metis Italise Oceani se circumcingi dignatur.
nee tricomis Sicilise margine Scriptum est enim coarctatur. Nam etsi vim passa
' Nascetur pulchra Troianus origine Csasar, Imperium Oceano, famam qui terminet astris.' "
So Fr. Zoannetus, in the six- (afterwards Pope Pius II), De
teenth century, declares it to be Ortu et Authoritate Imperii Eo-
a mortal sin to resist the Empire, mani, Cf. Gerlach Buxtorff, IHs-
as the power ordained of God. eertatio ad Aweam Bvllam. ™ -^neas Sylvius Piccolomini
U
290 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XV. cemed only to restore order and aggrandize his house, and thinking apparently that nothing more was to be made of the imperial crown, Rudolf was content never to receive it, and purchased the Pope^s good- will by surrendering his jurisdiction in the capital, and his claims over the bluest of the Countess Matilda. Henry the Luxemburger ventured on a bolder course; urged perhaps only by his lofty and chivalrous spirit, perhaps in despair at effecting any- thing with his slender resources against the princes of Germany. Crossing from his Burgundian domi- nions with a scanty following of knights, and de- scending from the Cenis upon Turin, he found his prerogative higher in men^s belief after sixty years of neglect than it had stood under the last Hohen- staufen^. The cities of Lombardy opened their gates ; Milan decreed a vast subsidy ; Guelf and Ghibeline exiles alike were restored, and imperial vicars ap- pointed everywhere: supported by the Avignonese pontiff, who dreaded the restless ambition of his French neighbour, king Philip IV, Henry had the interdict of the Church as well as the ban of the Empire at his command. But the illusion of success vanished as sooti as men began to be again governed by their ordinary passions and interests, and not by an imaginative reverence for the glories of the past. Tumults and revolts broke out in Lombardy; at Rome the king of Naples held St. Peter's, and the
» For an excellent view of the Italy ^ by E. A. Freeman, in Op- position of the Emperors in Italy, ford Esscuyi for 1857. see Ancient Greece and Medicevai
THE HOLT ROMAN EMFIRE. 291
coronation must take place in St. John Lateran^ on Ch. XV. the southern bank of the Tiber. The hostility of the Guelfic league, headed by the Florentines, Guelfs even against 'the PopCj obliged Henry to depart from his impartial and republican policy, and to purchase the aid of the Ghibeline chiefs by granting them the government of cities. With few troops, and encom- Death of passed by enemies, the heroic Emperor sustained an ^^'^^ • unequal struggle for a year longer, till, in a.d. 131 3, he sank beneath the fevers of the deadly Tuscan sum- mer. His German followers believed, nor has history wholly rejected the tale, that poison was given him by a Dominican monk, in sacramental wine.
Others after him descended from the Alps, but Later Em- they came, like Lewis the Fourth, Rupert, Sigismund, /^^J!^ *** at the behest of a faction, which found them usefiil tools for a time, then flung them away in scorn ; or like Charles the Fourth and Frederick the Third, as the humble minions of a French or Italian priest. With Henry the Seventh ends the history of the Empire in Italy, and Dante's book is an epitaph instead of a prophecy. A sketch of its argument will convey a notion of the feelings with which the noblest Ghibelines fought, as well as of the spirit in which the Middle Age was accustomed to handle such subjects.
Weary of the endless strife of princes and cities, Dante. of the factions within every city against each other, seeing municipal freedom, the only mitigation of turbulence, vanish with the rise of domestic tyrants, Dante raises a passionate cry for some power to still
292 THE HOLT J&OMAN EMPIRE.
Ch, XV. the tempest, not to quench liberty or supersede local self-government, but to correct and moderate them, to restore unity and peace to hapless Italy. His reasoning is throughout closely syllogistic : he is alternately the jurist, the theologian, the scholastic metaphysician: the poet of Divina Commedia is betrayed only by the compressed energy of diction, by his clear vision of the unseen, rarely by a glowing metaphor. The** Be Monarchy is first proved the true and rightful chia." ' form of government. Men^s objects are best attained during universal peace: this is possible only under a monarch. And as he is the image of the Divine unity, so man is through him made one, and brought most near to God. There must, in every system of forces, be a ^^primum mobile;^' to be perfect, every organization must have a centre, into which all is gathered, by which all is controlled®. Justice is best secured by a supreme arbiter of disputes : himself un- solicited by ambition, since his dominion is already bounded only by ocean. Man is best and happiest when he is most free ; to be free is to exist for one's own sake. To this grandest end does the monarch and he alone guide us ; other forms of government are perverted P, and exist for the benefit of some class; he seeks the good of all alike, being to that very end appointed %
Abstract arguments are then confirmed from his-
o Suggesting the celestial hier- i '* Non enim cives propter
archies of Dionysius the Areopa- consules nee gens propter regem,
gite. sed e converso consules propter
p Quoting Aristotle's Politics, cives, rex propter gentem."
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 293
tory. Since the world began there has been but Oh. XV. one period of perfect peace, and but one of perfect monarchy, that, namely, which existed at our Lord^s birth, under the sceptre of Augustus ; since then the heathen have raged, and the kings of the earth have stood up; they have set themselves against their Lord, and his anointed the Roman prince'. The universal dominion, the need for which has been thus established, is then proved to belong to the Romans. Justice is the will of God, a will to exalt Rome shewn through her whole history". Her virtues deserved honour: Virgil is quoted to prove those of JEneas, who by descent and marriage was the heir of three continents : of Asia through Assaracus and Creusaj of Africa by Electra (mother of Dardanus and daughter of Atlas) and Dido; of Europe by Dardanus and Lavinia. God's favour was approved in the fall of the shields to Numa, in the miraculous deliverance of the capital from the Gauls, in the hailstorm after Cannse. Justice is also the advan- tage of the state : that advantage was the constant object of the virtuous Cincinnatus, and the other heroes of the republic. They conquered the world for its own good, and therefore justly, as Cicero attests * ; so that their sway was not so much ^^ im- perium^' as " patrocinium orbis terrarum.^' Nature
' '^ Beges et principes in hoc death of Alexander the Great, iinico concordantes, ut adversen- * Cic, Be Off., ii. " Ita ut
tur Domino suo et uncto suo illud patrocinium orbis terramm
HomanoPrincipi/' haying quoted potius quam imperium poterat
*' Quare fremuerunt gentes." nominari."
* Especially in the opportune
294 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XV. herself, the fountain of all right, had, by their
y^g 4.2)e. geographical position and by the gift of a genius
MoTuxr- so vifforous, marked them out for universal do- mimon : —
** Ezcudent alii spirantia moUius sera, Credo eqaidem : vivos ducent de marmore vultus ; Orabunt causas melius, coelique meatus Describent radio, et surgentia sidera dicent : Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento ; Hffi tibi erunt artes ; padsque imponere morem, Paroere subiectis, et debellare superbos."
Finally, the right of war asserted, Christ^s birth, and death under Pilate, ratified their government. For Christian doctrine requires that the procurator should have been a lawful judge '*, which he was not unless Tiberius was a lawful Emperor.
The relations of the imperial and papal power are then examined, and the passages of Scripture (tradi- tion being rejected), to which the advocates of the Papacy appeal, are elaborately explained away. The argument from the sun and moon* does not hold, since both lights existed before man's creation, and when, as still sinless, he needed no controlling powers. Else accidentia would have preceded propria in creation.
*i '' Si Pilati imperimn non de take the device as typifying the
iure fuit, peccatum in Christo accord of the spiritual and teni-
non fiiit adeo punitum." poral powers which was brought
* There is a curious seal of the about at the acpession of Otto,
Emperor Otto IV (figured in the Guelfic leader, and the fa-
J. M. Heineccius, De vetenbus voured candidate of Pope Inno-
Germanortim atque aHarum na- cent III.
tionttm sigillia), on which the The analogy between the lights
sun and moon are represented of heaven and the princes of
over the head of the £mperor. earth is one which mediaeval
Heineccius says he cannot ex- writers are very fond ofl It
plain it, but there seems to be seems to have originated with
no reason why we should not Gregory VII.
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE, 295
«
The moon, too, does not receive her being nor all Ch. XV. her light from the sun, but so much only as makes her more effective. So there is no reason why the temporal should not be aided in a corresponding measure by the spiritual authority. This difficult text disposed of, others fall more easily; Levi and Judah, Samuel and Saul, the incense and gold offered by the Magi^ ; the two swords, the power of binding and loosing given to Peter. Constantine^s donation was illegal : no single Emperor nor Pope can dis- turb the everlasting foundations of their respective thrones : the one had no right to bestow, nor the other to receive, such a gift. Leo the Third gave the Empire to Charles wrongfully: ^^ umrpatio iuris non fadt iusJ^ It is alleged that all things of one kind are reducible to one individual, and so all men to the Pope. But Emperor and Pope differ in kind, and so far as they are men, are reducible only to God, on whom the Empire immediately depends; for it existed before Peter^s see, and was recognized by Paul when he appealed to Caesar. The temporal power of the Papacy can have been given neither by natural law, nor divine ordinance, nor universal consent : nay, it is against its own Form and Essence, the life of Christ, who said, " My kingdom is not of this world.'^
Man's nature is twofold, corruptible and incor- ruptible: he has therefore two ends, active virtue
y Typifying the spiritual and paid to Christ from that which temporal powers. Dante meets his Yicar can rightfully demand, this by distinguishing the homage
296 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XV. on eartb^ and tlie enjoyment of the sight of God The " De hereafter ; the one to be attained by practice con- Monar- formed to the precepts of philosophy, the other by conclusion, the theological virtues. Hence two guides are needed, the pontiflF and the Emperor, the latter of whom, in order that he may direct mankind in accordance with the teachings of philosophy to temporal blessedness, must, preserve universal peace in the world. Thus are the two powers equally ordained of God, and the Emperor, though supreme in all that pertains to the secular world, is in some things dependent on the pontiflF, since earthly happiness is subordinate to eternal. ^^ Let Caesar, therefore, shew towards Peter the reverence wherewith a firstborn son honours his father, that, being illumined by the light of his paternal favour, he may the more excellently shine forth upon the whole world, to the rule of which lie has been appointed by Him alone who is of all things, both spiritual and temporal, the King and Governor/^ So ends the treatise.
Dante^s arguments are not stranger than his omis- sions. No suspicion is breathed against Constantine^s donation; no proof is adduced, for no doubt is felt, that the Empire of Henry the Seventh is the legi- timate continuation of that which had been swayed by Augustus and Justinian. Yet Henry was a German, sprung from Rome's barbarian foes, the elected of those who had neither part nor share in Italy and her capital.
CHAPTER XVI.
♦THE CITY OF ROME IN THE MIDDLE AGES.
'^ It is related/' says Sozomen in the ninth hook Ch. XVI. of his Ecclesiastical History, ^^ that when Alaric was hastening against Rome, a holy monk of Italy admon- ished him to spare the city, and not to make himself the cause of such fearful ills. But Alaric answered, ^ It is not of my own will that I do this ; there is One who forces me on, and will not let me rest, hidding me spoil Rome *.' '^
Towards the close of the tenth century the Bohe- mian Woitech, famous in after legend as St. Adalbert, forsook his bishopric of Prague to journey into Italy, and settled himself in the Roman monastery of Sant' Alessio. After some few years passed there in reli- gious solitude, he was summoned back to resume the duties of his see, and laboured for awhile among his half-savage countrymen. Soon, however, the old longing came over him: he resought his cell upon the brow of the Aventine, and there, wandering among the ancient shrines, and taking on himself
* Hist. Eccl. 1. ix. c. 6 : rhy B\ fiidierait Kcd itririTTft r^v *P£firjv ^6»at, &5 ovx €Ki)v TcCSe hrixfip^h TopBtcy. &\\d ris <nv€xvs hox^^Soy ainhv
298 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XVI. the menial offices of the convent, he abode happily for a space. At length the reproaches of his metro- politan, the archbishop of Mentz, and the express commands of Pope Gregory the Fifth, drove him back over the Alps, and he set off in the train of Otto the Third, lamenting, say his biographers, that he should no more enjoy his beloved quiet in the mother of martyrs, the home of the Apostles, golden Bome. A few months later he died a martyr among the pagan Lithuanians of the Baltic^.
Nearly four hundred years later, and nine hundred after the time of Alaric, Francis Petrarch writes thus to his friend John Colonna : —
^^Thinkest thou not that I long to see that city to which there has never been any like nor ever shall be ; which even an enemy called a city of kings ; of whose people it hath been written, ' Great is the valour of the Roman people, great and terrible their name/ concerning whose unexampled glory and incomparable Empire, which was, and is, and is to be, divine prophets have sung ; where are the tombs of the apostles and martyrs and the bodies of so many thousands of the saints of Christ c?^^
It was the same irresistible impulse that drew the
** See the two Lives of St. Adal- " In prsesens nihil est quod in-
bert in Pertz, MM,H., iv., evi- choare a\isiin, miraculo rerum
dently compiled soon after his tantarum et stuporis mole obru-
death. tus .... praesentia vero, minim
<! Another letter of Petrarch's dictu, nihil imminuit sed auxit to John Colonna, written immedi- omnia : vere maior fait Boma ately after his arrival in the city, maioresque sunt reliquise quam deserves to be quoted, it is so like rebar : iam non orbem ab hac what a stranger would now write urbe domitum sed tam sero do- off after his first day in Bome : — mitum miror. V&le.*'
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 299
warrior, the monk, and the scholar towards the mys- Ch. XVI. tical city which was to mediseval Europe more than Delphi had been to the Greek or Mecca to the Islamite, the Jerusalem of Christianity, the city whidi had once ruled the earth, and now ruled the world of disembodied spirits^. For there was then, as there is now, something in Rome to attract men of every class. The devout pilgrim came to pray at the shrine of the Prince of the Apostles, too happy if he could carry back to his monastery in the forests of Saxony or the bleak Atlantic coast the bone of some holy martyr; the lover of learning and poetry dreamed of Virgil and Cicero among the shattered columns of the Forum ; the Germanic kings, in spite of pestilence, treachery, and seditions, came with their hosts to seek in the ancient capital of the world the fountain of temporal dominion. Nor hfts the spell yet wholly lost its power. To half the Christian nations Rome is the metropolis of religion, to all the metropolis of art. In her streets, and hers alone among the cities of the world, may every form of human speech be heard : she is more glorious in her decay and desolation than the stateliest seats of modem power.
But while men thought thus of Rome, what was Rome herself?
The modem traveller, after his first few days in
^ The idea of the continuance as a specimen a poem upon Home,
of the sway of Home under a new by Hildebert (bishop of Caen, and
character is one which mediseval afterwards archbishop of Tours),
writers delight to illustrate. In written in the begiiming of the
Appendix, Note D, there is quoted twelfth century.
300 , THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XVI. Rome, when he has looked out upon the Campagna » from the summit of St. Peter's, psSed the chilly corri- dors of the Vatican, and mused under the echoing dome of the Pantheon, when he has passed in review the monuments of regal and republican and papal Rome, begins to seek for some relics of the twelve hundred years that lie between Constantino and Pope Julius the Second. 'Where,' he asks, 'is the Rome of the Middle Ages, the Rome of Alberic and Hilde- brand and Rienzi ? the Rome which dug the graves of so many Teutonic hosts; whither the pilgrims flocked ; whence came the commands at which kings bowed ? Where are the memorials of the brightest age of Christian architecture, the age which reared Cologne and Rheims and Westminster, which gave to Italy the cathedrals of Tuscany and the wave- washed palaces of Venice V
To this question there is no answer. Rome, the mother of the arts, has scarcely a building to com- memorate those times, for to her they were times of turmoil and miseiy, times in which the shame of the present was embittered by recollections of a brighter past. Nevertheless a minute scrutiny may still dis- cover, hidden in dark corners or disguised under an. unbecoming modem dress, much that carries us back to the mediaeval town, and helps us to realize its social and political condition. Therefore a brief notice of the state of Rome during the Middle Ages, with especial reference to those monuments which the visitor may still examine for himself, may not be without its use, and is at any rate no unfitting
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 301
pendant to an account of the institution which drew Ch. XVI. from the city its viame and its magnificent pre- tensions. Moreover^ as will appear more fully in the sequel^ the history of the Roman people is an in- structive illustration of the influence of those ideas upon which the Empire itself rested, as well in their weakness as in their strength ®.
It is not from her capture by Alaric, nor even from Causes of the more destructive ravages of the Vandal Genseric, de<My% that the material and social ruin of Rome must be ^^^ ^v- dated, but rather from the repeated sieges which she sustained in the war of Belisarius with the Ostro- goths. This struggle however, long and exhausting as it was, would not have proved so fatal had the pre- vious condition of the city been sound and healthy. Her wealth and population in the middle of the fifth century were probably little inferior to what they had been in the most prosperous days of the imperial government. But this wealth was entirely gathered into the hands of a small and effeminate aristocracy. The crowd that filled her streets was composed partly of poor and idle freemen, unaccustomed to arms and debarred from political rights ; partly of a far more numerous herd of slaves, gathered from all parts of the world, and morally even lower than their masters. There was no middle class, and no system of muni- cipal institutions, for although the senate and consuls
« In writing this chapter I It is not yet complete^ and there
have derived much assistance is unfortunately no English trans-
fi'om the admirable work of Fer- lation ; but I am informed by the
dinand Gregorovius, Geschichte author that one is likely ere long
der Stadt Mom -in Mittelalter, to appear.
302
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XVI. with many of the lesser magistracies continued to eixist, they had for centuries enjoyed no effective power, and were nowise fitted to lead and rule the people. Hence it was that when the Gothic war and the subsequent inroads of the Lombards had reduced the great families to beggary, the . framework of society dissolved and could not be replaced. In a state rotten to the core there was no vital force leffc for reconstruction. The old forms of political activity had been too long dead to be recalled to life: the people wanted the moral force to produce new ones, and all the authority that could be said to exist in the midst of anarchy tended to centre itself in the chief of the new religious society.
So far Rome's condition was like that of the other great towns of Italy and Gaul. But in two points her case differed from theirs, and to these the dif- ference of her after fortunes may be traced. Her bishop had no temporal potentate to overshadow his dignity or check his ambition, for the vicar of the Eastern court lived far away at Ravenna, and seldom interfered except to ratify a papal election or punish a more than commonly outrageous sedition. Her population received an all but imperceptible infusion of that Teutonic blood and those Teutonic customs by whose stern discipline the inhabitants of northern Italy were in the end renovated. Everywhere the old institutions had perished of decay : in Rome alone there was nothing except the ecclesiastical system out of which new ones could arise. Her condition was therefore the most pitiable in which a commu-
Peculiari- tiea in the position of Borne.
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 303
nity can find itself^ one of struggle without purpose ch. XVI. or progress. The citizens were divided into three orders : the military class^ including what was left of the ancient aristocracy ; the clergy^ a host of priests, monks and nuns, attached to the countless churches and convents ; and the people or plebs, as they are called, a poverty-stricken rabble without trade, with- out industry, without any municipal organization to bind them together. Of these two latter classes the Pope was the natural leader, the first was divided into factions headed by some three or four of the great families, whose quarrels kept the town in inces- sant bloodshed. The internal history of Rome from the sixth to the twelfth century is an obscure and tedious record of the contest of these factions with each other, and of the aristocracy as a whole with the slowly growing power of the Church.
The revolt of the Romans from the Iconoclastic Her condi- Emperors of the East, followed as it was by the re- Jj^^^^^ ception of the Franks as patricians and emperors, is and tenth an event of the highest importance in the history *^*^^*^^* of Italy and of the popedom. In the domestic con- stitution of Rome it made little change. With the instinct of a profound genius, Charles the Great saw that Rome, though it might be ostensibly the capital, could not be the real centre of his dominions. He continued to reside in Germany, and did not even build a palace in Rome. For a time the awe of his power, the presence of his missus or lieutenant, and the occasional visits of his successors Lothar and Lewis II to the city, repressed her internal disorders.
304
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XVT. But after the death of the prince last named^ and still more after the dissolution of the Carolingian Empire itself, Rome relapsed into a state of profligacy and barbarism to which, even in that age, Europe supplied no parallel, a barbarism which had inherited all the vices of civilization without any of its virtues. The papal office in particular seems to have lost its religious character, as it had certainly lost all claim to moral purity. For more than a century the chief priest of Christendom was no more than a tool of some ferocious faction among the nobles. Criminal means had raised him to the throne ; violence, some- times going the length of mutilation or murder, de- prived him of it. The marvel is, a marvel in which papal historians have not unnaturally discovered a miracle, that after sinking so low, the papacy should ever have risen again. Its rescue and exaltation to the pinnacle of glory was accomplished not by the Romans but by the effi)rts of the Transalpine Church, aiding and prompting the Saxon and Franconian Emperors. Yet even the religious reform did not abate intestine turmoil, and it was not till the twelfth century that a new spirit began to work in politics, which ennobled if it could not heal the suflerings of the Roman people.
Ever since the time of Alberic their pride had re- volted against the haughty behaviour of the Teutonic Emperors. From still earlier times they had been * jealous of sacerdotal authority, and now watched with alarm the rapid extension of its influence. The events of the twelfth century gave these feelings a definite
Orowth of a repvh- Ucanfed- i/ng : hos- tility to the Popes*
THE HOLY ROMAN UMPIRE, 305
direction. It was the time of the struggle of the In- Ch. XVI. vestiture, in which Hildebrand and his disciples had been seen striving to draw all the things of this world as well as of the next into their grasp. It was the era of the revived study of Roman law, by which alone the extravagant pretensions of the canonists could be resisted. The Lombard and Tuscan towns had be- come flourishing municipalities, independent of their bishops, and at open war with their Emperor. While Arnold of. all these things were stirring the minds of the Ro- '^^*^' mans, Arnold of Brescia came preaching reform, de- nouncing the corrupt life of the clergy, not perhaps, like some others of the so-called schismatics of his time, denying the need of a sacerdotal order, but at any rate urging its restriction to purely spiritual duties. On the minds of the Romans such teaching fell like the spark upon dry grass; they threw off the yoke of the Pope®, drove out the imperial prefect, reconstituted the senate and the equestrian order, appointed consuls, struck their own coins, and pro- fessed to treat the German Emperors as their nomi- • nees and dependants. To have successfully imitated the republican constitution of the cities of northern Italy would have been much, but with this they were not content. Knowing in a vague ignorant way that there had been a Roman republic before there was a iloman empire, they fed their vanity with visions of a renewal of all their ancient forms, and saw in fancy
« Republican forms of some doubtless it was by him chiefly
sort had existed before Arnold's that the spirit of hostility to the
arrival, but we hear the name of clerical power was infused into
no other leader mentioned ; and the minds of the Bomans.
306 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XVI. their senate and people sitting again upon the Seven Hills and ruling over the kings of the earth. Step- ping, as it were, into the arena where Pope and Emperor were contending for the headship of the world, they rejected the one as a priest, and declaring the other to be only their creature, they claimed as theirs the true and lawful inheritance of the world-
•
dominion which their ancestors had won. Antiquity waa in one sense on their side, and to us now it seems less strange that the Roman people should aspire to rule the earth than that d Geiman barbarian should rule it in their name. But practically the scheme was absurd, and could not maintain itself against any serious opposition. As a modern historian aptly ex- presses it, ^' they were setting up ruins -/' they might as well have raised the broken columns that strew the Forum and hoped to rear out of them a strong and stately temple. The reverence which the men of the Middle Ages felt for Rome was given altogether to the name and to the place, nowise to the people. • As for power, they had none: so far from holding Italy in subjection, they could scarcely maintain Skfyrt- themselves against the hostility of Tusculum. But sigUed j^ would have been well worth the while of the
polvcy of ^
the Em- Teutonic Emperors to have made the Romans their 'perors. allies, and bridled by their help the temporal ambi- tion of the Popes. The ofiTer was actually made to them, first to Conrad the Third, who seems to have taken no notice of it; and afterwards, as has been already stated, to Frederick the First, who repelled in the most contumelious fashion the envoys of the
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 307
senate. Hating and fearing the Pope, he always re- Oh. XVI. spected him : towards the Romans he felt all the contempt of a feudal king for burghers, and of a German warrior for Italians. At the demand of Pope Hadrian, who prudently thought no heresy so dangerous as one which threatened the authority of the clergy, Arnold of Brescia was seized by the imperial prefect, put to death, and his ashes cast into the Tiber, lest the people should treasure them up as relics. But the martyrdom of their leader did not quench the hopes of his followers. The republican constitution continued to exist, and rose from time to time, during the weakness or the absence of the Popes, into a brief and fitful activity'. Once awakened, the idea, seductive at once to the imagination of the scholar and the vanity of the Roman citizen, could not wholly disappear, and two centuries after Arnold^s time it found a more bril- liant if less disinterested exponent in the tribune Nicholas Rienzi.
The career of this singular personage is misunder- Character stood by those who suppose him to have been possessed oftu^^^ of profound political insight, a republican on modern t,r\hune, principles. He was indeed, despite his overweening conceit, and what seems to us his charlatanry, both a patriot and a man of genius, in temperament a poet,
' The series of papal coins is which bear on the obverse the
interrupted (with one or two head of the Apostle Peter, with
slight exceptions) from A.O. 984 the legend Roman. Pricipe : on
(not long j.fter the time of Alberic) the reverse the head of the Apo-
toA.D. 1304. In their place we stlePaul, — legend, Benat. Popul.
meet with various coins struck by Q. R.^-Gregorovius, iU supra. the municipal authorities, some of
308 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE,
Ch. XVI. filled with soaring ideas. But those ideas, although " dressed out in gaudier' colours hy his lively fancy, were after all only the old ones, memorials of the long- faded glories of the heathen republic, and a series of scornful contrasts levelled at her present oppressors, both of them shewing no vista of future peace except through the revival of those ancient names to which there were no things to correspond. It was by de- claiming on old texts and displaying old monuments that the tribune enlisted the support of the Roman populace, not by any appeal to democratic principles ; and the whole of his acts and plans, thoujgh they astonished men by their boldness, do not seem to have been regarded as fantastic or impracticable^. In the breasts of men like Petrarch, who loved Rome even more than they hated her people, the enthusiasm of Rienzi found a sympathetic echo : others scorned and denounced him as an upstart, a demagogue, and a rebel. Both friends and enemies seem to have comprehended and regarded as natural his feelings and designs, which were altogether those of his age. Being, however, a mere matter of imagination, not of reason, having no anchor, so to speak, in realities, no true relation to
8 Bienzi called himself Augus- de lo imperio in Alemagna, e tus as well as tribune ; " tribune disse * Voglio vedere che rasdone Augusto de Roma." He cited, haco nella elettione/ che tro- on his appointment, the Pope vasse scritto cbe passato alcuno and cardinals to appear before tempo la elettione recadeva a li the people of Bome and give an Bomani." — Vita di^ Cola di Ri- account of their conduct ; and enzif c. xxvi (written by a con- after them IAbb Emperor. ** An- temporary). I give the spelling cora citao lo Bavaro (Lewis the as it stands in Muratori*s edition. Fourth). Puoi citao li elettori
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE, 309
the world as it then stood, these schemes of repub- Ch. XVT. lican revival were as transient and unstable as they were quick of growth and gay of colour. As the authority of the Popes became consolidated, and free municipalities disappeared elsewhere throughout Italy, the dream of a renovated Rome at length withered up and died. Its last struggle was madd in the conspiracy of Stephen Porcaro, in the time of Pope Nicholas the Fifth; and from that time onward there was no question of the supremacy of the bishop within his holy city.
It is never without a certain regret that we watch the disappearance of a belief, however illusive, around which the love and reverence of mankind once clung. But this illusion need be the less regretted that it had only the feeblest influence for good on the state of mediaeval Rome. During the three centuries Causes of that- lie between Arnold of Brescia and Porcaro, the ^^/^'^^^^^
' of the
disorders of Rome were hatdly less violent than they struggle had been in the Dark Ages, and to all appearance ^^^^^^J worse than those of any other Eur^opean city. There- was a want not only of fixed authority, but of those elements of social stability which the other cities of Italy possessed. In the greater republics of Lom- bardy and Tuscany the bulk of the population were artizans, hard working orderly people ; while above them stood a prosperous middle class, engaged mostly in commerce, and having in their system of trade- guilds an organization both firm and flexible. It was by foreign trade that Genoa, Venice, and Pisa became great, as it was the wealth acquired by manufacturing
310 THE HOLY BOM AN EMPIRE.
Ch, XVI. industry that enabled Milan and Florence to over- come and incorporate the territorial aristocracies which surrounded them.
Rome possessed neither source of riches* She wa» ill-placed for trade; having no market she had no goods to dispose of^ and the unhealthiness which long neglect had brought upon her Campagna made its fertility unavailable. Already she stood as she stands now, lonely and isolated, a desert, at her very gates. Iroemal As there was no industry, so thefe was nothing that ITthe^^ deserved to be called a citizen class. The people The people, were a mere rabble,, prompt to follow the demagogue who flattered their vanity, prompter still to desert him in the hour of danger. Superstition was with them a matter of national pride, but they lived too near sacred things to feel much reverence for them : they ill-treated the Pope and fleeced the pilgrims who crowded to their shrines ; they were probably the only community in Europe who sent no recruit to the armies of the Cross. Priests, monks, and all the nondescript hangers on of an ecclesiastical court formed a large part of the population > while of the rest many were supported in a state of half men- dicancy by the countless religious foundations, themselves enriched by the gifts or the plunder of The ndbi- Latin Christendom. The noble families were nu- ^^' merous, powerful, ferocious; they were surrounded
by bands of unruly retainers, and waged a constant war against each other from their castles in the adjoining country or in the streets of the city itself. Had things been left to take their natural course.
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 3 1 1
one of these families^ the Colonna, for instance^ or Ch. XVI.
the Orsini, would probably have ended by overcoming
its rivals^ and have established, as was the ease in the
republics of Romagna and Tuscany, a ^^signpria^^ or
local tyranny, like those which had once prevailed
in the cities of Greece. But the presence of the TheUshop.
sacerdotal power, as it had hindered the growth of
feudalism, so also stood in the way of such a de-
velopement as this, and in so far aggravated the
confusion of the city. Although the Pope was not
as yet recognized as legitimate sovereign, he was not
only the most considerable person in Rome, but the
only one whose authority had anything of an official
character. But the reign of each pontiff was short ;
he had no military force, he was frequently absent
from his see. He was, moreover, very often a member
of one of the great families, and, as such, no better
than a faction leader at home, while venerated by the
rest of Europe as the universal priest.
It remains only to speak of the person who should The Em- have been to Some what the national king was to ^^' the cities of France, or England, or Germany, that is to say, of the Emperor. As has been said already, his power was a mere chimera, chiefly important as furnishing a pretext to the Colonna and other Ghibel- ine chieftains for their opposition to the papal party. Even his abstract rights were matter of controversy. The Popes, whose predecessors had been content to govern as the lieutenants of Charles and Otto, now maintained that Rome as a spiritual city could not be subject to any temporal jurisdiction, and that she
312 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XVI. was therefore no part of the Roman Empire, though at the same time its capital. Not only, it was urged, had Constantine yielded up Rome to Sylvester and his successors, Lothar the Saxon had at his corona- tion formally renounced his sovereignty hy doing homage to the pontiff and receiving the crown as his vassal. The Popes felt then as they feel now, that their dignity and influence would suffer if they should even appear to admit in their place of residence the jurisdiction of a civil potentate, and although they could not secure their own authority, they were at ledst able to exclude any other. Hence it was that they were so uneasy whenever an Emperor appeared to be crowned, that they raised up difficulties in his path, and endeavoured to be rid of him as soon as possible. Visits of And here it may not be amiss to say something of rors to ^"® programme, as one may call it, or these imperial Rome. visits to Rome, and of the marks of their presence which the Germans left behind them, remembering always that after the time of Frederick the Second it was rather the exception than the rule for an Emperor to be crowned in his capital at all.
The traveller who enters Rome now, if he comes, as he most commonly does, by way of Civita Vecchia, slips in by the railway before he is aware, is huddled into a vehicle at the terminus, and set down at his hotel in the middle of the modem town before he has seen anything at all. If he comes overland from Tuscany along the bleak road that passes near Veii and crosses the Milvian bridge, he has indeed from the slopes of the Ciminian range a splendid prospect
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 313
«
of the sea-like Campagna, girdled in by glittering Ch. XVI. hills, but of the city he sees no sign, save the pin- nacle of St. Peter's, until he is within the walls. Far otherwise was it in the Middle Ages. Then travellers Thdr ap- of every grade, from the humble pilgrim to the new- ^^®^^* made archbishop who came in the pomp of a lengthy train, to receive from the Pope the ' pallium of his office, approached from the north or north-east side ; following a track along the hilly ground on the Tuscan side of the Tiber until they halted on tlie brow of Monte Mario ^ — the Mount of Joy — and saw the city of their solemnities lie spread before them, from the great pile of the Lateran far away upon the Coelian hill, to the basilica of St. Peter's at their feet. They saw it not, as now, a sea of billowy cupolas, but a mass of low red-roofed houses, varied by tall brick towers, and at rarer intervals by masses of ancient ruin, then larger far than now; while over all rose those two monuments of the best of the heathen Emperors, monuments that still look down, serenely changeless, on the armies of new nations and the festivals of a new religion — the columns of Marcus Aurelius and Trajan.
From Monte Mariio'the Teutonic host descended, when they had paid their orisons, into the Neronian field, the piece of flat land that lies outside the gate
*» The Germans called this hill, Mario, is- not known, unless it
which is the highest in or near be, as some think, a corruption
Rome, conspicuous from a beau- of Mons Malus.
tiful group of stone-pines upon It was on this hill that Otto
its brow, Mons Gaudii ; the on- the Third hanged Crescentius and
gin of the Italian name, Monte his followers.
314
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XVI. of St. Angelo. Here it was the custom for tlie elders Their en- ^^ ^^^ Romaus to meet the elected Emperor, present trarwe. their charters for confirmation, and receive his oath to preserve their good customs*. Then a procession was formed : the priests and monks, who" had come out with hymns to greet the Emperor, led the way ; the knights and soldiers of Rome, such as they were, came next; then the monarch, followed by a long array of Transalpine chivalry. Passing into the city they advanced to St. Peter's, where the Pope, sur- rounded by his clergy, stood on the great staircase of the basilica to welcome and bless the Roman king. On the next day came the coronation, with cere- monies too elaborate for description^, ceremonies which, we may well believe, were seldom duly com- pleted. Far more usual were other rites, of which the book of ritual makes no mention, unless they are to be counted among the ^^good customs of the Romans/' the clang of war bells, the battle cry of Hostility German and Italian combatants. The Pope, when and \he^^ ^® could not keep the Emperor from entering Rome, w>ple. required him to leave the bulk of his hosts without the walls, and if foiled in this, sought his safety in raising up plots and seditions against his too powerful
* I quote this from the Ordo Romanus as it stands in Mura- tori*s' third Dissertation in the Antiquitates Italice medii cevi.
^ Great stress was laid on one part of the procedure, — the lead- ing by the Emperor of the Pope's psJfrey for some distance. Fred- erick Bar barossa's omission of this mark of respect when Pope Ha-
drian lY met him on his way to Rome, had nearly caused a breach between the two poten- tates, Hadrian absolutely refus- ing the kiss of peace until Fred- erick should have gone through the form, which he was at 1^ forced to do in a somewhat igrno- minious way.
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE, 315
friend. The Roman people, on the other hand, vio- Ch. XVI. lent as they often were against the Pope, felt never- theless a sort of national pride in him. Very different were their feelings towards the Teutonic chieftain, who came from a far land to receive in their city, yet without thanking them for it, the ensign of a power which the prowess of their forefathers had won. Despoiled of their ancient right to choose the universal bishop, they clung all the more desperately to the belief that it was they who chose the uni- versal prince; and were mortified afresh when each successive sovereign contemptuously scouted their claims, and paraded before their eyes his rude bar- barian cavalry. Thus it was that a Roman sedition was the all but invariable accompaniment of a Roman coronation. The three revolts against Otto the Great have been already described. His grandson Otto the Third, in spite of his passionate fondness for the city, was met by the same faithlessness and hatred, and departed at last in despair at the failure of his attempts at conciliation ^ A century afterwards, Henry the Fifth's coronation produced violent tu-
1 A remarkable speech of ex- vestri cum orbem ditione preme-
postulation made by Otto III to rent nunquam pedem posuerunt ;
the Homan people (after one of scilicet ut nomen vestrum et glo-
their revolts) from the tower of riam ad fines usque dilatarem :
his house on the Aventine has vos filios adoptavi : tos cunctis
been preserved to us. It begins prsetuli." — Vita S. Bemwardi ;
thus : ** Vosne estis mei Romani ? in Pertz, M. O. H., t. iv.
Propter vos quidem m2am pa- It is from this word Theotiscus
triam,propmquo8quoquereliqui; (doubtless etymologically the
amore vestrj Saxones et cunctos same as *Deutsch* and * Teuton')
TheotiscoSy sanguinem meum, that the Italian form 'Tedesco'
proieci ; vos in remotas partes seems to have been derived, imperii nostri adduxi, quo patres
316 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE,
Ch. XVI. mults, which ended in his seizing the Pope and cardinals in St. Peter^s, and keeping them prisoners till they submitted to his terms. Remembering this. Pope Hadrian the Fourth would fain have forced the troops of Frederick Barbarossa to remain without the walls, but the rapidity of their movements discon- certed his plans and anticipated the resistance of the Roman populace. Having established himself in the Leonine city", Frederick barricaded the bridge over the Tiber, and was duly crowned in St. Peter^s. But the rite was scarcely finished when the Romans, who had assembled in arms on the Capitol, dashed over the bridge, fell upon the Germans, and were with difficulty repulsed by the personal efforts of Frederick. Into the city he did not venture to pursue them, nor was he at any period of his reign able to make him- self master of the whole of it. Finding themselves similarly baffled, his successors at last accepted their position, and were content to take the crown on the Pope^s conditions and depart without further question.
Memorials Coming SO seldom and remaining for so short a
manic Em- ^^^^y ^^ ^^ ^^^ wonderful that the Teutonic Emperors perors in should, in the seven centuries from Charles the Great to Charles the Fifth, have left fewer marks of their presence in Rome than Titus or Hadrian alone have done; fewer and less considerable even than those which tradition attributes to Servius Tullius or the elder Tarquin. Those which do exist are just sufficient to make the absence of all others more conspicuous.
™ The Leonine city, so called the Vatican and St. Peter's and from Pope Leo IV, lay between the river.
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE, 317
The most important dates from the time of Otto the Ch. XVI. Third, the only Emperor who attempted to make 0/ Otto Rome his permanent residence. Of the palace, pro- *^ Third. bably nothing more than a tower, which he built on . the Aventine, no trace has been discovered ; but the church, founded by him to receive the ashes of his friend the martyred St. Adalbert, may still be seen upon the island in the Tiber. Having received from Benevento relics supposed to be those of Bartho- lomew the Apostle °, it became dedicated to that saint, and is now the church of San Bartolommeo in Isola, whose quaintly picturesque bell-tower of red brick, now grey with extreme age, looks out from among the orange trees of a convent garden over the swift-eddying yellow waters of the Tiber.
Otto the Second, son of Otto the Great, lies buried Of Otto in the crypt of St. Peter^s, the only Emperor who has foimd a resting-place among the graves of the Popes ^. His tomb is not far from that of his nephew Pope Gregory the Fifth : it is a plain one of roughly chiselled marble. The lid of the superb porphyry sarcophagus in which he lay for a time now serves as the great font of St. Peter^s, and may be seen in
^ Gregorovius says that in Campo Santo of Pisa, a city
reality they are the bones of St. always conspicuous for her zeal
Paulinus of Nola. on the imperial side.
o The only other of the Ten- Six Emperors lie buried at
tonic Emperors buried in Italy Speyer, three or four at Prague,
were, so far as I know, Henry two at Aachen, two at Bamberg,
the Sixth and Frederick the one at Innsbruck, one at Magde-
Second, who lie at Palermo, burg, one at Quedlinburg, two at
Conrad IV, buried at Foggia, Munich, and most of the later
and Henry the Seventh, whose cnes at Vienna, sarcophagus may be seea in the
318 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XVI. the baptismal chapel, on the left of the entrance of Of Fred' *^® church, not far from the tombs of the Stuarts. erich the Last of all must be mentioned a curious relic of the ^^ Emperor Frederick the Second, the prince whom of
all others one would least expect to see honoured in the city of his foes. It is an inscription in the palace of the Conservators upon the Capitoline hill, built into the wall of the great staircase, and relates the victory of Frederick's army over the Milanese, and the capture of the carroccio ^ of the rebel city, which he sends as a trophy to his faithful Romans. These are all or nearly all the traces of her Teutonic lords that Rome has preserved till now. Pictures indeed there are in abundance, from the mosaic of the Scala Santa at the Lateran' and the curious frescoes in the church of Santi Quattro Incoronati ^, down to the paintings of the Sistine antechapel and the Stanze of Raphael in the Vatican, where the triumphs of the Popedom over all her foes are set forth with matchless art and equally matchless un- veracity. But these are mostly long subsequent to the events they describe, and these all the world knows.
Associations of the highest interest would have attached to the churches in which the imperial coro- nation was performed — a ceremony which, whether
* See note », p. 197. of Pope Innocent HI. They ' See p. 126. represent scenes in the Hfe of " These highly curious frescoes the Saint, more particuhirly the are in the chapel of St. Sylvester making of the famous donation attached to the very ancient to him by Constantine, who sub- church of Quattro Santi on the missively holds the bridle of his Coelian hill, and are supposed to palfrey, have been executed in the time
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE, 319
we regard the dignity of the performers or the Ch. XVI. splendour of the adjuncts^ was probably the most imposing that modern £uit)pe has known. Bat old St. Peter's disappeared in the end of the fifteenth century, not long after the last Roman coronation, that of Frederick the Third, while the basilica of St. John Lateran, in which Lothar the Saxon and Henry the Seventh were crowned, has been so wo- fully modernized that we can hardly figure it to ourselves as the same building.
Bearing in mind what was the social condition of Causes of Rome during the middle ages, it becomes easier to medicevul understand the architectural barrenness which at first ?»o««w«»*fe excites the visitors surprise. Rome had no temporal sovereign, and there were therefore only two classes who could build at all, the nobles and the clergy. Of these, the former had seldom the wealth, and never the taste, which would have enabled them to construct palaces graceful ad the Venetian or mas- sively grand as the Florentine. Moreover, the con- Barbarism stant practice of domestic war made defence the first %jlracy*' object of a house, beauty and convenience the second. The nobility, therefore, either adapted ancient edifices to their purpose or built out of their materials those huge square towers of brick, a few of which still frown over the narrow streets in the older parts of Rome. We may judge of their number from the statement that the senator Brancaleone destroyed one hundred and forty of them. With perhaps no more than one exception, that of the so-called House of Rienzi, these towers are the only domestic buildings in the
320 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XVI. city older than the middle of the fifteenth century. The vast palaces to which strangers now flock for the sake of the picture galleries they contain, have been most of them erected in the sixteenth or seven- teenth centuries, some few even later. Among the earliest is that Palazzo Cenci, whose gloomy low- browed arch so powerfully affected the imagination of Shelley.
It was no want of wealth that hampered the archi- tectural efforts of the clergy, for vast revenues flowed Ambition, in upon them from every corner of Christendom. A weakness, orood deal was actually spent upon the erection or
and cor- ° . j r r ^
ruptumof repairs df churches and convents, although with a the clergy, j^gg liberal hand than that of such great Transalpine prelates as Hugh of Lincoln or Conrad of Cologne. But the Popes always needed money for their projects of ambition, and in times when disorder or corruption were at their height the work of building stopped altogether. Thus it was that after the time <5f the Carolingians scarcely a church was erected until the beginning of the twelfth century, when the reforms of Hildebrand had breathed new zeal into the priest- hood. The Babylonish captivity of Avigiion, as it was called, with the great schism of the West that followed upon it, was the cause of a second similar intermission, which lasted nearly a century and a half.
At every time, however, even when his work went on most briskly, the labours of the Boman architect took the direction of restoring and re- adorning old churches rather, than of erecting new
THM HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 321
ones. While the Transalpine countries, except in a Ch. XVI. few favoured spots, such as Provence and part of the Tendmcyof Bhineland, remained during several ages altogether ^^.-^^^'"^w^ without stone churches, Rome possessed, as the inheri- adhere to tance of the earlier Christian centuries, a profusion o^^f^'wient houses of worship, some of them still unsurpassed in splendour, and far more than adequate to the needs of her diminished population. In repairing these from time to time, their original form and style of work was usually as far as possible preserved, while in constructing new ones, the abundance of models, beautiful in themselves, .and hallowed as well by antiquity as by religious feeling, enthralled the invention of the workman, bound him down to be at best a faithful imitator, and forbade him to deviate at pleasure from the old established manner. Thus it befel that while his brethren through the rest of Europe were passing by suc- cessive steps from the old Roman and Byzantine styles to Romanesque, and from Romanesque to Gothic, the Roman architect scarcely departed from the plan and arrangements of the primitive basilica. This is one chief reason why there is so little of Absence of Gothic work in Rome, so little even of Romanesque ^^ *** like that of Pisa. What there is appears chiefly in the pointed window, more rarely in the arch, seldom or never in spire or tower or column. Only one of the existing churches of Rome is Gothic throughout, and that, the Dominican church of S. Maria sopra Minerva, was built by foreign monks. In some of the other churches, and especially in the cloisters of
ings
ders,
322 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XVI. the convents, instances may be observed of the sanle style : in others slight traces, by accident or design almost obliterated *.
Destruction The mention of obliteration suggests a third
and alUra- i» x-i_ j." x ^ t i -l 'u
lion of the cause 01 the comparative want ot mediaeval build- ?51-^^" ^"^ ^^ *^® ^^^y — ^^^ constant depredations and changes of which she has been the subject. Rome has been, ever since the time of Constantine, a city of destruction, and Christians have vied with pagans, citizens with enemies, in urging on the By^inva- fatal work. Her siege and capture by Robert Guiscard^, the ally of Hildebrand against Henry the Fourth, was far more ruinous than the attacks of the Goths or the Vandals ; and itself yields in atrocity
* Thus in the church of San bility — ^ia a pretty little building; Lorenzo without the walls there more like northern Gothic than are several pointed windows, now anything within the walls of bricked up ; and similar ones may Rome. It stands upon the Ap- be seen in the church of Ara Coeli pian Way, opposite the tomb of on the sunmiit of the Capitol. Osecilia Metella, which the Cae- So in the apse of St. John Late- tani used as a stronghold, ran there are three or four win- " A good deal of the mischief dows of Gothic form : and in its done by Bobert Guiscard, from cloister, as well as in that of which the parts of the city lying • St. Paul without the walls, a beyond the Coliseum towards tiie great deal of beautiful Lombard rirer and St. John Lateran never work. The elegant porch of the recovered.is attributed to the Sara- church of Sant' Antonio Abate cenic troops in his service. Saracen is Lombard. In the apse of the pirates are said to have once before church of San Giovanni e Paolo sacked Kome. Genseric was not on the Coelian hill there is an ex- a heathen, but he was a furious ternal arcade exactly like those Arian, which, as far as respect of the Duomo at Pisa. Nor are to the churches of the orthodox these the only instances. went, was nearly the same thing.
The ruined chapel attached to He is supposed to have carried
the fortress of the Caetani family — • off the seven -branched candle-
the family to which Boniface the stick and other vessels of the
Eighth belonged, and whose head Temple, which Titus had brought
is now the first of the Roman no- from Jerusalem to Rome.
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 323
to the sack of Rome in a. d. 1526 by the soldiers Ch. XVI. of the Catholic king and most pious Emperor Charles By the the Fifths. Since the days of the first barbarian ^^?* ^f invasions the Romans have gone on building with Ages, materials taken from the ancient temples^ theatres, law-courts, baths, and villas, stripping them of their gorgeous casings of marble, pulling down their walls for the sake of the blocks of travertine, setting up their own hovels on the top or in the midst of these majestic piles. Thus it has been with the memorials of paganism : a somewhat different cause has contributed to the disappearance of the mediaeval churches. What pillage, or fanaticism, or the wanton By modem lust of destruction did in the one case, the osten- ^^^^^ ^-^ tatious zeal of modem times has done in the other. The era of the final establishment of the Popes as temporal sovereigns of the city, is also that of the supremacy of the Renaissance style of architecture. After the time of Nicholas the Fifth, the pontiff against whom, it will be remembered, the spirit of municipal freedom made its last struggle in the conspiracy of Porcaro, nothing was built in Gothic, and the prevailing enthusiasm for the antique pro- duced a corresponding dislike to every thing medi*> «eval, a dislike conspicuous in men like Julius the Second and Leo the Tenth, from whom the grandeur of modem Rome may be said to begin. Not long after their time the great religious movement of the
" We are told that one cause their anger at the ruinous con- of the ferocity of th^ German dition of the imperial palace, part of the army of Charles was
y 2
324 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE:
Oh. XVI. sixteenth century, while triumphing in the north of Europe, was in the south met and overcome by a counter«reformation in the bosom of the old Church herself, and the construction or restoration of eccle- ^astical buildings became again the passion of the devout. No employment, whether it be called an amusement or a duty, could have been better suited to the court and aristocracy of Rome. They were indolent; wealthy, and foni of displaying their wealth : full of good taste, and anxious, especially when advancing years had chased away youtVs plea- sures, to be full of good works also. Popes and cardinals and the heads of the great families vied with one another in building new churches and restoring or enlarging those they found till little of the old was left; raising over them huge cupolas, substituting massy pilasters for the single-shafted columns, adorning the interior with a profusion of rare marbles, of carving and gilding, of frescoes and altar-pieces by the best masters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. None but a bigoted medise- vaUst can revise to acknowledge the warmth of tone, the repose, the stateliness, of the churches of modern Rome ; but even in the midst of admiration the sated eye turns away from the wealth of pon- derous ornamentj and we long for the clear pure colour, the simple yet grand proportions that give a charm to the buildings of an earlier age. Existing Fcw of the aucicnt churches have escaped un- ^Dc^kand touched; many have been altogether rebuilt. There Middle are also some, however, in which {he modemizers of
Ages.
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 325
• the sixteenth and subsequent centuries have spared Ch. XVI.
two features of the old structure, its round apse or '
tribune and its bell-tower. The apse has its interior The Mo-
usually covered with mosaics, exceedingly interesting, *"*^''
both from the ideas they express and as the only
monuments of pictorial art that remain to us from
the Dark Ages. To speak of them, however, as they
deserve to be spoken of, would involve a digression
for which there is no space here. The campanile or The Bell-
bell-tower is a quaint little square brick tower, of ^^^*'*'
no great height, usually standing detached from the
church, and having in its topmost, sometimes also
in its other upper stories, several arcade windows,
divided by tiny marble pillars*. What with these
campaniles, then far more numerous than they are
now, and with the huge brick fortresses of the
nobles, towers must have held in the landscape of the
mediaeval city very much the part which domes da
now. Although less imposing, they were probably
more picturesque, the rather as in the earlier part
of the Middle Ages the. houses and churches, which
are now mostly crowded together on the flat of the
Campus Martins, were scattered over the heights
and slopes of the Coelian, Aventine, and Esquiline
hills y. Modem Rome lies chiefly on the opposite
^ These campaniles are gene- few or none, unless it be that of
rally supposed to date from the San Prassede, are older than the
ninth and tenth centuries. I am twelfth century, informed, however, by Mr. J. H. This of course applies only to
Parker, of Oxford, whose anti- the existing buildings. The type
quarian skill is well known, that of tower may be older, he is led to believe by an exami- 7 The Palatine hill seems to
nation of their mouldings that Tiave been then, as it is for the
326 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE:
Ch. XVI. or north-eastern side of the Capitol, and the change
from the old to the new site of the city, which
can hardly be said to have distinctly began before
the destruction of the south-western part of the
town by Robert Guiscard, was not completed until
the sixteenth century. In A. n. 1536 the Capitol
was rebuilt by Michael Angelo, in anticipation of
the entry of Charles the Fifth, and the palace of
the Senator, the greatest municipal edifice of Rome,
which had hitherto looked towards the Coliseum
and the Forum, was made to front in the direction
of St. Peter^s and the modern town.
Chaiufed The Rome of to-day is no more like the city of
l^^city, Rienzi than she is to the city of Trajan; just 2^
the Roman church of the nineteenth century differs
profoundly, however she may strive to disguise it,
from the church of Hildebrand. But among all
their changes, both church and city have kept
themselves wonderfully free from the intrusion of
foreign, at least of Teutonic, elements, and have
faithfully preserved at all times something of an
Analogy old Roman character. Latin Christianity inherited
arcUtecture^^^^^ the imperial system of old that firmly knit yet
and her flexible Organization, which was one of the errand
ctvu and i
ecclesicuti- secrets of her power : the great men whom mediaeval
calconsti' B^me gaye to or trained up for the Papacy were,
like their progenitors, administrators, legislators,
most part now, a waste of stu- court in the beginning of the
pendous ruins. In the great eighth century. In the time of
imperial palace upon its northern Charle i, some seventy years later,
and eastern sides was the resi- this palace was no longer habit'*
dence of an official of the Eastern able.
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE, 327
statesmen ; seldom enthusiasts themselves^ but per- Ch. XYI. fectly understanding how to use and guide the en- thusiasm of others— of the French and German cru- saders^ of men like Francis of Assissi and Dominic and Ignatius. Between Catholicism in Italy and Catholicism in Germany or England there was always^ as there is still, a very perceptible differ- ence. So also, if the analogy be not too fancifiil, was it with Rome the city. Socially she seemed always Preaerva- dnfting towards feudalism; yet she never fell intoj^t"" its grasp. Materially, her architecture was at one character time considerably influenced by Gothic forms, yet Gt)thic never became, as in the rest of Europe, the dominant style. It approached Rome late, and departed from her early, so that we scarcely notice its presence, and seem to pass almost without a break from the old Romanesque' to the Greco-Roman of the Renaissance. Thus regarded, the history of the city, both in her political state and in her buildings, is seen to be intimately connected with that of the Holy Empire itself. The Empire in its title and its pretensions expressed the idea of the permanence of the institutions of the ancient world ; Rome the city had, in externals at least, carefully preserved their traditions : the names of her magis- tracies, the character of her buildings, all spoke of antiquity, and gave it a strange and shadowy life in the midst of new races and new forms of faith. In its essence the Empire rested on the feeling of the
* Such as we see it in the later and lesser churches of basilica form.
328 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XVI. unity of mankind; it was the perpetuation of the Roman Bdatim 0/ dominion by which the old nationalities had been de-^ ^cmcUhe stroyed, with the addition of the Christian element Empire. which had created a new nationality that was also universal. By the extension of her citizenship to all her subjects heathen Rome had become the common home, and, figuratively, even the local dwelling- place of the civilized races of man. By the theo- logy of the time Christian Borne had been made the mystical type of humanity, the one flock of the faithftd scattered over the whole earth, the holy city whither, as to the temple on Moriah, all the Israel of God should come up to worship. She wad not merely an image of the mighty world, she was the mighty world itself in miniature. The pastor of her local church is also the universal bishop ; the seven suffragans who consecrate him are the overseers of petty sees in Ostia, Antium, and the like, towns lying close round Rome : the cardinal priests and deacons who join these seven in electing him derive their title to be princes of the Church, the supreme spiritual council of the Christian world, from the incumbency of a parochial cure within the precincts of the city. Similarly, her ruler, the Emperor, is ruler of mankind ; he is chosen by the acclamations of her people ^ : he can be lawfully crowned nowhere
* It was thus that most of the and partly of private arratige-
earlier Teutonic Emperors, and ment with the Pope. In later
notably Charles and Otto, pro- times, the seven Germanic princes
fessed to have obtained the were recognized as the legally
crown ; although practically it qualified electoral body, but their
was partly a matter of conquest appearance on the stage was a
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 329
but in one of her basilicas. She is, like Jerusalem Ch. XVI, of old, the mother of us all.
There is yet another way in which the record of the domestic contests of Rome throws light upon th^ history of the Empire. From the eleventh cen- tury to the fifteenth her citizens ceased not to demand in the name of the old republic their free- dom from the tyranny of the nobles and the Pope, and their right to rule over the world at large. These efforts — selfish and fantastic we may call them, yet mfen like Petrarch did not disdain to them their sympathy — issued from the same theories and were directed to the same ends as those which inspired Otto the Third and Frederick Barbarossa and Dante himself. They witness to the same incapacity to form any ideal for the future except a revival of the past; the sam6 belief that one universal state is both desirable and possible, but possible only through the means of Borne: the same refusal to admit that a right which has once existed can ever be extinguished. In the days of the Renaissance these notions were passing silently away: the succeeding century brought with it misfortunes that broke the spirit of the nation. Italy was the battle-field of
result of the oonfbsion of the a formal cesfion of their privilege
Grenuan kingdom with the Ro- by the Koman people to l£e
man Empire, and in strictness seven electors. See p. 25oet«pra:
they had nothing to do with the and of. Matthew YiUani (iv. 77),
Roman crown at all. The right ''II popolo Romano, non da se,
to bestow it could only — on prin- ma la chiesa per lui concedette la
ciple — belong to some Roman elezione degli Imperadori a sette
authority, and those who felt the principi della Magna." difiSculty were driven to suppose
330 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE,
Ch. XVI. Europe : her wealth became the prey of a rapacious soldiery : the last and greatest of her republics was enslaved by an unfeeling Emperor, and handed over as the pledge of amity to a selfish Medicean Pope. When the hope of independence had been lost, the people turned away from politics to live for art and literature, and found, before many generations had passed, how little such exclusive devotion could com- pensate for the departure of freedom, and a national spirit, and the activity of a civic life. A century after the golden days of Ariosto and Raphael, Italian literature had become frigid and affected, while Italian art was dying of mannerism.
At length, after long ages of sloth, the stagnant waters were troubled. The Romans, who had lived in listless contentment under the paternal sway of the Popes, received new ideas from the advent of the revolutionary armies of Prance, and have found the Papal system, since its re-establishment fifty years ago as a modern bureaucratic despotism, far less
Feelinga of tolerable than it was of yore. Our own days have
the modem j-i p t> "l • n •
Italicma ®^^ *^® name 01 Jtlome become again a rallymg- towards cry for the patriots of Italy, but in a sense most unlike the old one. The contemporaries of Arnold and Rienzi desired freedom only as a step to uni- versal domination : their descendants, more wisely, yet not more froni patriotism than from a pardonable civic pride, seek only to be the capital of the Italian kingdom. Dante prayed for a monarchy of the world, a reign of peace and Christian brotherhood : those who invoke his name as the earliest prophet
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 331
of their creed strive after an idea that never crossed c«. xvi. his mind — the national union of Italy**.
Plain common-sense politicians in other countries do not understand this passion for Borne as a capital^ and think it their duty to lecture the Italians on their flightiness. The latter do not themselves pre- tend that the shores of the Tiber are a suitable site
«
for a capital: Rome is lonely^ unhealthy^ and in a bad strategical position ; she has no particular facilities for trade : her people, with some fine quali- ties, are less orderly and industrious than the Tus- cans or the Piedmontese. Nevertheless all Italy cries with one voice for Rome, firmly believing that national life can never thrill with a strong and steady pulsation till the ancient capital has become the nation^s heart. They feel that it is owing to Rome — Rome pagan as well as Christian — that they once played so grand a part in the drama of Euro- pean history, and that they have now been able to attain that fervid sentiment of unity which has brought them at last together imder one govern- ment. Whether they are right, whether if right they are likely to be successful, need not be inquired here. But it deserves to be noted that this enthu- siasm for a famous name — for it is nothing more — is substantially the same feeling as that which created and hallowed the Holy Empire of the Middle Ages. The events of the last few years on both sides of the
*> That which Dante, Arnold of 'party of movement' is their hos- Brescia, and the rest reallyhave in tUity to the temporal power of common with the modern Italian the Popes.
332 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XVI. Atlantic have proved that men are not now, any more than they ever were, chiefly governed by cal- culations of material profit and loss. Sentiments, fancies, theories, have not lost their power; the spirit of poetry has not wholly passed away from politics. And strange as seems to us the worship paid to the name of mediaeval Bome by those who saw the sins and the misery of her people, it can hardly have been an intenser feeling than is th^ imagina- tive reverence wherewith the Italians of to-day look on the city whence, as from a fountain, all the streams of their national life have sprung, and in which, as in an ocean, they are all again to mingle.
CHAPTER XVII.
TH£ RENAISSANCE : CHANOB IN THE CHARACTEB
OF THE EMPIRE.
In Frederick the Third's reign the Empire sank Ch. XVII. to its lowest point. It had shot a fitful gleam j^redencic under Sigismund, who in convoking and presiding ^^^• over the council of Constance had revived one of the highest functions of his predecessors. The pre- Ctmneil of cedents of the first ^eat oecumenical councils, ^'^*'*'*^*' and especially of the council of Nicsea^ had es- tablished the principle that it belonged to the Emperor, even more properly than to the Pope, to convoke ecclesiastical assemblies from the whole Christian world*. The tenet commended itself to the reforming party in the church, headed by Gerson, the chancellor of Paris, whose aim it was, while making no changes in matters of faith, to correct the abuses which had grpwn iip in discipline and government, and limit the power of the Popes by exalting the authority of general councils, to whom there was now attributed an infallibility supe- rior even to that which resided in the successor of
" See Dean Stanley's Lectures on the History of the Eastern Church, Lecture II.
334 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE,
Ch. XVII. Peter. And although it was only the sacerdotal body, not the whole Christian people, who were thus made the exponents of the universal religious consciousness, the doctrine was nevertheless a fore- shadowing of that fuller freedom which, was soon to follow. The existence of the Holy Empire and the existence of general councils were, as has been already remarked, necessary parts of one and the same theory^, and it was therefore more than a coincidence that the last occasion on which the whole of Latin Christendom met to deliberate and act as a single commonwealth^ was sfeo tfaelast on which that commonwealth's lawful temperaniead appeared in the exercise of his international functions. Never afterwards Was he, in th^ eyes of Europe, anything more than a German monarch. Weakness "ft" might seem doubtful whether he would long many as ^^^^^^^ ^ monarch at all. When in a.d. 1493 the caJa- compared mitous rejgn of Frederick the Third ended, it was other states impossible for the princes to see with unconcern the of Europe, condition into which their selfishness and turbulence had brought the . Empire. The time was indeed critical. Hjtherto ttie Germans had been, protected rather by the weakness of their enemies than:- by their own strength. From France there had been
^ It is not without interest to Florence were not recognized
observe that the council of Basel from first to last by all Europe,
shewed signs of reciprocating im- as was the council of Constance,
perial care by claiming tiiose very When the assembly of Trent met,
rights over the Empire to which the great religious schism had
the Popes were accustomed to Already made a general council,
pretend. in the true sense of the word,
^ The councils of Basel and impossible.
TBE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 335
little to fear while the English menaced hef on one Ch. XVII. side and the Burgundian dukes on the other : from England still less while she was torn by the strife of York and Lancaster. But now throughout Western Europe the power of the feudal oligarchies was broken;" and its chief countries were being, by the establishment"^ of fixed rules of succession and the absorption of the smaller into the larger princi- paKties^rapidiy built up into compact and aggressive military monarchies* Thus Spain became a great ' stafeTby the union of Castile and Aragon, and the conquest of the Moors of Granada. Thus in Eng- land there arose the popular despotism of the Tudors. Thus France, enlarged and consolidated under Lewis the Eleventh and his successor, began to acquire that predominant influence on the politics of Europe which her commanding geographical position, the martial spirit of her people, and, it must be added, the unscrupulous ambition of her rulers, have secured to her in every succeeding century. Mgantiiift^^here had appeared ia the far East, a .foe still more ter- rible. The capture of Constantinople gave the Turks a firm ^Id on Europe, and inspired them with the hope of effecting in the fifteenth century what Ab- derrahman and his Saracens had so .nearly effected in the eighth — of establishing the faith of Islam through all the provinces that obeyed the Western as well as the Eastern Csesars. The navies of the Ottoman Sultans swept the Mediterranean ; their weltappomted armies pierced Hungary and threat- ened Vienna,
336 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XVII. Nor was it only that formidable enemies had Loss of im- arisen without : the -frontiers of Germany herself perialter- were exposed by the loss of those* adjoining terri- tories which had formerly owned allegiance to the Emperors. Poland, once tributary, had shaken off the yoke at the interregnum, and had recently wrested Prussia and Lusatz from the Teutonic knights. Bohemia, where German culture had struck deeper roots, remained a member of the Empire; but the privileges she had obtained from Charles the Fourth,* and the subsequent acquisition of Silesia and Moravia, made her virtually independent. The restless Hungarians avenged their former vassalage to Germany by frequent inroads on her eastern border. Italy, Imperial power in Italy ended with the life of
Henry the Seventh. Rupert did indeed cross the Alps, but it was as the hireling of Florence ; Frede- rick the Third received the Lombard crown, but it no longer conveyed the slightest power. In the be- ginning of the fourteenth century Dante still hopes the renovation of his country from the action of the Teutonic Emperors. Some fifty years later Matthew Villani sees clearly that they do not and cannot reign to any purpose south of the Alps*^. Nevertheless the
•1 " E pero yenendo gP impera- Italy is worth quoting, as a fair
dori deUa Magna col supremo sample of the skill of mediaevals
titolo, e volendo col senno e col'la in such matters : — " La Italia
forza della Magna reggiere gU tutta e divisa mistamente in due
Italian!, non lo fanno e non lo parti, Tuna che segiiita ne'&tti
posBono fare." — M. Villani, iv. del mondo la santa chiesa —
77. e questi son dinominati GueM ;
Matthew Villani's etymology ciofe, guardatori di f^. E Taltra
of the two great iaction names of parte seguitano lo 'mperioofedele
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 337
phantom of imperial authority lingers on for a time. Ch. XVII. It is put forward by the Ghibeline tyrants of the cities to justify their attacks on their Guelfic neigh- bours : even resolute republicans like the Florentines do not yet venture altogether to reject it, however unwilling to permit its exercise. Before the middle of the fifteenth century, the names of Guelf and Ghibeline had ceased to have any sense or meaning ; the Pope was no longer the protector nor the Em- peror the assailant of municipal freedom, for municipal freedom itself had well-nigh disappeared. But the old war-cries of the Church and the Empire were still repeated as they had been three centuries before, and the rival principles that had once enlisted the noblest spirits of Italy on one or other side had now sunk into a pretext for wars of aggrandizement or of mere unmeaning hate. That which had been remarked long before in Greece was seen to be true here ; the spirit of faction outlived the cause of faction, and became itself a new and prolific cause of a useless, endless strife.
After Frederick the Third no Emperor was crowned in Rome, and almost the only trace of that con- nexion between Germany and Italy, to maintain which so much had been risked and lost, was to be found in the obstinate belief of the Hapsburg Emperors, that their own claims, though often purely dynastic and personal, could be enforced by an appeal to the imperial rights of their predecessors. Because
o enfedele che sia delle cose del belli *, cio^/ giiidatori di bat- mondo a santa chiesa. E chia- taglie." mansi Ghibellini, quasi guida
338 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE,
Ch. XVII. Barbarossa had overrun Lombardy with a Trans- alpine host they fancied themselves entitled to de- mand duchies for themselves and their relatives, and to entangle the Empire in wars wherein no interest but their own was involved.
Burgundy. The kingdom of Aries, if it had never added much strength to the Empire, had been useful as an out- work against Prance. And thus its loss — Dauphin6 passing over, partly in a.d. 1350, finally in 1457, Provence in i486 — ^proved a serious calaniitj;, ^^X }^ brought the French nearer to Switzerland, and.opened to them a tempting ptussage into Italy. The Em- perors did not for a time expressly renounce their feudal suzerainty over these lands, but if it was hard io enforce a feudal claim over a rebellious landgrave in Germany, how mxich harder to control a vassal who was also the mightiest king in Europe.
On the north-western frontier, the fall in a.d. 1477. of the great principality which the dukes of French Burgundy were building up, was seen with pleasure by the Bhinelanders whom Charles the last duke had incessantly alarmed. But the only effect of its fall was to leave France and Germany directly confront- ing each other, and it was soon seen that the balance of strength lay on the side of the less numerous but better organized and more active nation.
StoUzer- ^jsitzeriand, too, could no longer be considered a
land. part of the Germanic realm. The revolt of the Forest Cantons, In a.d. 1313^ was against the oppressions practised in. the name of Albert count of Hapsburg, rather than against the legitimate authority of Albert
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 339
the Emperor. Bdt although several subsequent sove- Ch. XVII. reigns, and among them conspicuously Henry the Seventh and Sigismund, favoured the Swiss liberties, yet while the antipathy between the Confederates and the territorial nobility gave a peculiar direction to their policy, the accession of new cantons to their body, and their brilliant success against Charles the Bold in A. D. 1477, made them proud of a separate national existence, and not unwilling to cast them- selves loose from the stranded hulk of the Empire. .Maximilian tried to reconquer them, but after a fiirious struggle, in which the valleys of Western T}'rol were repeatedly laid waste by the peasants of the Engadin, he was forced to give way, and in a.d. J .^00 recognized them by treafar-aa praeticall^nde- pendent. Not, however, till the peace of Westphalia,
in A.D. 16^, was the Swiss CopfHer^^" J" the eye of public law a sovereign state, and even after that dat^ some of the towns continued to stamp their coins with the double eagle of the Empire.
If those losses of territory were serious, far more Internal serious was the plight in which Germany herself lay. ^^'**''*- The country had now become not so much an Empire as an aggregate of very many small states, governed by sovereigns who would neither remain at peace with each other nor combine against a foreign enemy, under the nominal presidency of an Emperor who had little lawful authority, and could not exert what he had ®. *
<* ''Nam quamvis Imperato- trum esse fateamini, precario rem et regem et dominum yes- tamen ille imperare videtur :
Z 2
340 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
There was another cause, besides those palpable
and obvious ones already enumerated, to which this
state of things must be ascribed. That cause is to
be found in the theory which regarded the Empire
as an international power, supreme among Christian
ln/«e9iceo/ states. Prom the day when Otto the Great was
of the J^ crowned at Bome, the characters of German
pire as <m and Boman Emperor were united in one person, and
timal it hasHbeen shewn how that unioii tended "niore and
power upon more to become a fusion. If the two offices, in their
the Oer- , , ...
manic cm- nature and origin so dissimilar, had been held by stu^uian. diffg^^^t ^^^^^ the Roman Empire would most
probably have soon disappeared, while the German kingdom grew into a robust national monarchy. Their connexion gave a longer life to the one and a feebler life to the other, while at the same time it transformed both. So long as Germany was only one of the many countries that bowed beneath their sceptre it was possible for the Emperors, though we need not suppose they troubled themselves with speculations on the matter, to distinguish their im- perial authority, as international and more than half religious, from their royal, which was, or was meant to be, exclusively local and feudal. But when within the narrowed bounds of Germany these international functions had ceased to have any meaning, when the rulers of England, Spain, France, Denmark, Hun- gary, Poland, Italy, Burgundy, had in succession
nulla ei potentia est ; tantum vius to the princes of Germany, ei paretis quantum vultis, vultis quoted by Hippolytus a Lapide. autera minimum." — -^neas Syl-
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 341
repudiated their control, and the Lord of the World Ch. XVII. found himself obeyed by none but his own people, he would not sink from being lord of the world into a simple Teutonic king, but continued to play in the more contracted theatre the part which had belonged* to him in the wider. Thus did Germany instead of Europe becomejthe sphere of his international juris- diction ; and her electors and princes, originally mere vassals, no greater than a count of Champagne in Prance, or an earl of Chester in England, stepped into the place which it had been meant that the several monarchs^ of Christendom should fill. If the power of their head had been what it was in the eleventh century, the additional dignity so as- signed to them might have signified very little. But coming in to confirm and justify the liberties already won, this theory of their relation to the sovereign had a great though imperceptible influence in changing the German Empire, as we may now begin to call it, from a state into a sort of confedera- tion or body of states, united indeed for some of the purposes of government, but separate and indepen- dent for others more important. Thus, and that in its ecclesiastical as well as its civil organiz^ion, Ger- many became a miniature of Christendom^. The Pope, though he retained the wider sway which his nvaT had lost, was in an especial manner the head of the German clergy, as the Emperor was of the laity : the three Jtthehish prelates sat in the supreme college
' See ^^gidi, Der Fursienrath book to which this Essay is under Tuich dem LunevUler Frieden; a great obligations.
342 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XVII. beside the four temporal electors : the nobility of prince-bishops and abbots was as essential a part of the constitution and as influential in the delibera- tions of the Diet as were the dukes, counts, and toiargraves of the Empire. The world-embracing Christian state was to have been governed by a hierarchy of spiritual pastors, whose graduated ranks of authority should exactly correspond with those of the temporal magistracy, who were to be like them endowed with worldly wealth and power, and to enjoy a jurisdiction co-ordinate although distinct. This system, which it was in vain attempted to establish in Europe during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, was in its main features that which pre- vailed in the Germanic Empire from the fourteenth Auitude of c^nixxrY onwards. And conformably to the analogy the Em- ^jjidi may be traced between the position of the
peror m *^ ^ ^ ^
Germany, archdukes of Austria in Germany and the place which ^wUh^hab ^^^ ^^^^ Saxon and the two first Franconian Em- of his pre- perors had held in Europe, both being recognized as Europe, leaders and presidents in all that concerned the com- mon interest, in the one case of the Christian, in the other of the whole German people, while neither of them had any power of direct government in the territories of local kings or lords; so the plan by which those who chose Maximilian emperor sought to strengthen their national monarchy was in sub- stance that which the Popes had followed when they conferred the crown of the world on Charles and Otto. The pontifis then, like the electors now, finding that they could not give with the title the
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 343
power which its fiinctions demanded, were driven Ch. XVII. to the expedient of selecting for the oflSce persons/ whose private resources enabled them to sustain it with dignity. The first Prankish and the first Saxon Emperors were chosen because they were already the mightiest potentates in Europe; Maxi- milian because he was the strongest of the German princes. The parallel may be carried one step further. Just as under Otto and his successors the Roman Empire was Teutonized, so now under the Hapsburg dynasty, from whose hands the sceptre departed only once thenceforth, the_,jreutonic Empire tends more V and more to lose itself in an Austrian monarchy. '
Of that monarchy and of the power of the house Beginmng of Hapsburff, Maximilian was, even more than^^^^, Kudolf his ancestor, the founder 8^. Uniting in mflmnce in his person those wide domains through Germany ^"^'"^'^y- which had been dispersed among the collateral branches of his house, and claiming by his marriage with Mary of Burgundy most of the territories of Charles the Bold, he was a prince greater than any who had sat on the Teutonic throne since the death of Frederick the Second. But it was as archduke of Austria, count of Tyrol, duke of Styria and Ca- rinthia, feudal superior of lands in Swabia, Alsace, and Switzerland, that he was great, not as Roman Emperor. For just as from him the Austrian mon- archy begins, so with him the Holy Empire in its
8 The two immediately pre- 1493), had been Hapsburgs. It
ceding Emperors, Albert II is nevertheless from Maximilian
(1438- 1 4 39) and Frederick III, that the ascendancy of that
father of Maximilian (1439- family must be dated.
344
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
mUian.
Ch. xvn.l old meaning ends. That strange system of doctrines, half religious half political, which had supported it for so many ages, was growing obsolete, and the theory which Imd wrought such changes on Ger- many and Europe, passed ere long so completely from remembrance that we can now do no more than call up a faint and wavering image of what it must once have been. Oharacter For it is not Only in imperial history that the ofMc^ accession of Maximilian is a landmark. That time — a time of change and movement in every part of human life, a time when printing had become com- mon, and books were no longer confined to the clergy, when drilled troops were replacing the feudal militia, when the use of gunpowder was changing the face of war — was especially marked byone event, to which the history of the world oflFers no parallel before or since— the^disCQvery of America. The cloud which from the beginning of things had bung thick and dark round the borders of civilization was sud- denly lifted: the feeling of mysterious awe with which men had regarded the firm plain of earth and her encircling ocean ever since the days of Homer, vanished when astronomers and geographers taught them that she was an insignificant globe, who, so far from being the centre of the universe, was herself swept round in the motion of one of the least of its countless systems. The notions that had hitherto prevailed regarding the life of man and his relations to nature and the supernatural, were rudely shaken by the knowledge that was soon gained of tribes in
The dis- covery of America.
nausance.
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 345
every stage of culture and living under every variety Ch. XVII. of condition, who had developed apart from all the influences of the Eastern hemisphere. In a.d. 1453^ the capture of Constantinople and extinction of the Eastern Empire had dealt a fatal blow to the prestige of tradition and an immemorial name ; in a.d. 1402, there was disclosed a world whither the eagles of all- conquering Rome had never wmged their fligmTTTo one couldTiiowii'ave'fepeated^e ^arguments of the Be Monarchia.
Another movement, too, widely difierent, but even The Be- more momentous, was beginning to spread from Italy beyond the Alps. Since the barbarian tribes settled in the Roman provinces, no change had come to pass in Europe at all comparable to that which followed the difiusion of the new learning, in the latter half of the fifteenth century. Enchanted by the beauty of the ancient models of art and poetry, more parti- cularly those of the Greeks, men came to regard with aversion and contempt all that had been done or produced from the days of Trajan to those of Pope Nicholas the Fifth. The Latin style of the writers who lived after Tacitus was debased : the architecture of the Middle Ages was barbarous: the scholastic philosophy was an odious and unmeaning jargon : Aristotle himself, Greek though he was, Aristotle who had been for three centuries more than a prophet or an apostle, was hurled from his throne, because his name was associated with the dismal quarrels of Scotists and Thomists. That spirit, whether we call it analytical or sceptical, or earthly, or simply secular,
346 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XVII. for it is more or less all of these — the spirit which n^as the exact antithesis of mediaeval mysticism, had swept in and carried men away, with all the force of a pent-up torrent. People were content to gratify their tastes and their senses, caring little for worship, and still less for doctrine : their hopes and pleasures were no longer such as had made their forefathers crusaders or ascetics ; their imagination was possessed hy associations far different from those which had in- spired Dante : they did not revolt against the church, but they had no enthusiasm for her, and they had enthusiasm for whatever was fresh and gracefiil and intelligible. From all that was old and solemn, or that seemed to savour of feudalism or monkery, they turned away, too indifferent to be hostile. And so,
rin the midst of the Renaissance; so, under the con- sciousness that former things were passing from the earth, and a new order opening; so, with the other beliefs and memories of the Middle Age, the shadowy rights of the Roman Empire melted away in the fuller modern light. Here and there a jurist muttered that no neglect could destroy its universal supremacy, or a priest declaimed to listless hearers on its duty to protect the Holy See ; bu,t to Germany it had become an ancient device for holding together the discordant members of her body, to its possessors an engine for extending the power of the house of Hapsburg. Em^rt Hencefortb#^^ihere£ore, we jnust.look upon jthe Holy
hencefoHh ^q^<qj^ Empire-4fcs lost in the^ Germany and after a
German. , . ^ , \
few faiat iiitempts to resuscitate old-fashioned claims, nothing remains to indicate its origin save a sounding
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 347
title and a precedence among the states of Europe. Ch. XVII. It was not that the Renaissance exerted any direct political influence either against the Empire or for it ; men were too busy upon statues and coins and manuscripts to care what befel Popes, pr Emperors* It acted rather by silently withdrawing the whole system of doctrines upon which the Empire had rested, and thus leaving it, since it had previously no support but that of opinion, without any sup- port at all.
During Maximilian's eventful reign several eflForts Auempta were^ade to construct a new, constitution, T)ut it is ^^J'g^.?* to German, rather than to imperial history that they manic Cm- properly belong. Here, indeed, the history of the Holy Empire might close, did not the title unchanged beckon us on, and were it not that the events of these later centuries may in their causes be traced back to. times when the name of Roman was not wholly a mockery. It can only be remarked that while the preservation of peace and the better administration of justice was in some measure attained by the Public Peace and Imperial Chamber, established in a.d. 1495, schemes still more important failed through the bad consti- tution of the Diet, and the unconquerable jealousy of the Emperors and the Estates. Maximilian refused to have his prerogative, indefinite though weak, re- stricted by the appointment of an administrative council**, and when the Estates extorted it from him, did his best to ensure its failure. In the Diet, which consisted of three colleges, electors, princes, and cities,
^ Reichsregiment.
348 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XVII. the lower nobility and knights of the Empire were unrepresented, and resented every decree that affected their position, refiising to pay taxes in voting which they had no voice. The interests of the princes and the cities were often irreconcilable, while the strength of the crown would not have been sufficient to make its adhesion to the latter of any eflFect. The policy of conciliating the commons, which Sigismund had tried, succeeding Emperors seldom cared to repeat, content to gain their point by raising factions among the territorial magnates, and so to stave off the un- welcome demand for reform. After many earnest attempts to establish a representative, system, such as might resist the tendency to local independence and cure the evils of separate administration, the Causes of hope SO often baffled died away. Forces were too of the WO' liearly balanced : the sovereign could not jBx5en3~his ject of re- personal control, nor could the reforming party limit him by a strong council of government, for such a measure would have equally trenched on the indepen- dence of the states. So ended the first great effort for German unity, interesting from its bearing on the events and aspirations of our own day; interesting, too, as giving the most convincing proof of the decline of the imperial office. For the projects of reform did not propose to effect their objects by restoring to Maximilian the authority his predeces- sors had once enjoyed, but by setting up a body which would resemble far more nearly the senate of a federal state than the administrative council which surrounds a monarch. The existing system developed
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE, 349
ifaelf further : relieved from external pressure, the Ch. xvii. princes became more despotic in their own territories: distinct codes were framed, and new systems of ad- ministration introduced : the insurgent peasantry were crushed down with more confident harshness. Already had leagues of princes and cities heen formed * (that of Swabia was one of the strongest forces in Germany^ and often the monarches firmest support); now alli- ances begin to be contracted with foreign powers, and receive a direction of formidable impoi-t from the rivalry which the pretensions on Naples and Milan of Charles the Eighth and Lewis the Twelfth of France kindled between their house and the Austrian. It was no slight gain to have friends in the heart of the enemy^s country, such as French intrigue found in the Elector Palatine and the count of Wiirtemberg.
Nevertheless this was also the era of the first Oenttanic conscious feeling of German . nationality, as dis- ^^^ tinct from imperial. Driven in on all hands, with Italy and the Slavic lands and Burgundy hopelessly lost, Teutschland learnt to separate itself from Welschland *^. The Empire became the represen- tative of a narrower but more practicable national union. It is not a mere coincidence that at this CJumge of
Titles.
date there appear several notable changes of style. ^^Nationis Teutonicae^^ (Teutscher Nation) is added to the simple ^^ sacrum imperium Romanum.^' The title of ^^Imperator electus/^ which Maximilian ob- tains leave from Pope Julius the Second to assume,
i Wenzel had encouraged the ^ The Germans^ like our own leagues of the cities, and incurred ancestors, called all foreign, i.e. thereby the hatred of the nobles. non-Teutonic nations, Welsh.
350 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XVII. when the Venetians prevent him from reaching his capital^ marks the severance of Germany from Rome. No subsequent Emperor received his crown in the ancient capital (Charles the Fifth was indeed crowned by the Pope^s hands, but the ceremony was at Bo- logna, and so of at least questionable validity) ; each assumed after his German coronation^ the title of The title Emperor Elect™, and employed this in all documents ^^^f^*" issued in his name. But the word ^^ elect'' being omitted when he was addressed by others, partly from motives of courtesy, partly because the old rules regarding the Roman coronation were forgotten, or remembered only by antiquaries, he was never called, even when formality was required, anything but Emperor. The substantial import of another title now first introduced is the same. Before Otto the First, the Teutonic king had called himself either '^rex'' alone, or ^^ Francorum orientalium rex,'' or " Francorum atque Saxonum rex :" after a.d. 962,
* The German crown was re- lay in too remote a comer of the ceived at Aachen, the ancient country to be a convenient ca- Frankish capital, where may still pital, and was moreover in dan- be seen, in the gallery of the gerous proximity to the West basilica, the marble throne on Franks, as stubborn old Ger- which every Emperor from mans continue to call them. Ajs Charles to Ferdinand I was early as a.d. 1353 we find bishop crowned. It was upon this Leopold of Bamberg complaining chair that Otto III had found that the French had arrogated the body of Charles seated, when to themselves the honours of the he opened his tomb in A.D. 100 1. Frankish name» and called them- Afber Ferdinand I, the corona- selves "reges FranciaB," instead tion as well as the election took of ''reges Francise occidentalis." place at Frankfort. An account — Lupoldus Bebenburgensis, a- of the ceremony may be found in pud Schardium, SyUoge Trouita'- Goethe's Wdkrheit und Dichtung, tuum,
Aachen, though it remained and ^ Erwahlter Kaiser. See Ap-
indeed is still a German town, pendix, Note C.
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 351
all lesser dignities had been merged in the ^' Ro- Ch. XVII. manorum Imperator °/^ To this Maximilian ap- pended '^Germanise rex/^ or, adding Frederick the Second^s bequest ®, '^ Konig in Germanien und Je- rusalem/^ Out of the title King of Germany, and that of Emperor, European usage formed the phrase ^' German Emperor/' or more incorrectly, ^^Emperor of Germany P/' The latter, however, does not occur, even in English books, tiU comparatively recent times ^.
•Jhat the Empire was thus sinking into a merely German power cannot be doubted. But it was only natural that those who lived at the time should not discern the tendency of events. Again and again did the restless and sanguine Maximilian propose the recovery of Burgundy and Italy, — ^his last scheme was to adjust the relations of Papacy and Empire by becoming Pope himself: nor were successive Diets less zealous to check private war, stiU the scandal of Germany, to set right the gear of the imperial chamber, to make the imperial officials permanent, and their administration uniform throughout the country. But while they talked the heavens dark- ened, and the flood came and destroyed them all.
» Romanorum rex (after Henry " Tbe Emperor," pure and sim-
II) till the coronation at Home. pie, just as they say " the French
o But the Emperor was only king." But the phrase " Empe-
one of many claimants to this reur d'Almayne" may be found
kingdom ; they multiplied as in very early French writers, the prospect of regaining it died i See Moser, Bdmische Kayser;
away. Groldast's and other collections
p English writers of the seven- of imperial edicts and proclama-
teenth century always call him tions.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE IlEFORMATION AND ITS EFFECTS UPON
THE EMPIBE.
Chap. The Reformation falls to be mentioned here, of
'__ course not as a religious movement, but as the cause
of political changes, which stiU further rent the Em- pire, and struck at the root of the theory by which it had been created and upheld. Luther completed the work of Hildebrand. Hitherto it had seemed not impossible to strengthen the German state into a monarchy, compact if not despotic ; the very Diet of Worms, where the monk of Wittenberg proclaimed to an astonished church and Emperor that the day of spiritual tyranny was past, had framed and. pre- sented a fresh scheme for the construction of a central council of government. The great religious schism put an end to all such hopes, for it became a source of pohtical disunion far more serious and per- manent than any that had existed before, and it taught the two factions into which Germany was henceforth divided to regard each other with feelings more bitter than those of hostile nations.
The breach came at the most unfortunate time possilile. After an election, more memorable than
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 353
any precedinff, an election in which Francis the Krst Chap.
XVIII of Prance and Henry the Eighth of England had
been his competitors, a prince had just ascended the ^/^^ imperial throne who united donuuoion&^va^teii than V. any Europe had seen since the . days of hw gfeat namesake. Spain and Naples, Flanders, and other parfs_of th$ Burgundian lands, as well as large regions in Eastern Germany, obeyed Charles : he drew inexhaustible revenues from a new empire beyond the Atlantic. Such a power, directed by a mind more resolute and profound than that of Maxi- milian his grandfather, might have well been able, despite the stringency of his coronation engage- ments*, and the watchfulness of the electors^, to override their usurped privileges, and make himself actually as well as officially the head of the nation. Charles the Fifth, though from the coldness of his manner and his Flemish speech never a favourite among the Germans, was in point of fact far stronger than Maximilian or any other Emperor who had reigned for three centuries. In Italy he was su- preme : England he knew how to lead, by flattering Henry and cajoling Wolsey : from no state but France had he serious opposition to fear. To this strength his imperial dignity was indeed a mere accident : its sources were the infantry of Spain, the looms of Flanders, the sierras of Peru. But the conquest once achieved, might could lose itself in right ; and as an
• The so-called "Wahloapitu- elect Charles, and were at last
lation." induced to do so only by then:
^ The electors long refused to overmastering fear of the Turks.
Aa
354 TEE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap, earlier Charles had veiled the terror of the Prankish
xvin
sword under the mask of Roman election, so might
his successor sway a hundred provinces with the sole name of Roman Emperor, and transmit to his race a dominion as wide and more enduring.
One is tempted to speculate as to what might have
happened had Charles espoused the reforming cause.
i^l^^?^ His reverence for the Pope^s person is sufficiently seen
wards the m the sack of Rome and the captivity of Clement ;
*^^^2^* tte traditions of his office might have led him to
movement. ^
tread in the steps of the Henrys and the Fredericks, into which even the timid Lewis the Fourth and the unstable Sigismund had sometimes ventured ; the awakening zeal of the German people, exasperated hy the exactions of the Romish court, would have strengthened his hands, and enabled him, while mo- derating the excesses of change, to fix his throne on the deep foundations of national love. It may well be doubted — Englishmen at least have reason for the doubt — whether the Reformation would not hav^ lost as much as it could have gained by being entangled in the meshes of royal patronage. But, setting aside Charles's personal leaning to the old faith, and forgetting that he was king of the most bigoted race of Europe, his position as Emperor made him ahnpst .perforce the JPppe's ally. TEe~EmpTre- had been called into being by Rome, had vaunted the protection of the Apostolic See as its highest earthly privilege, had latterly been wont, especially in Hapsburg hands, to lean on the papacy for support. Itself founded entirely on prescription and the tradi-
XVIII.
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE, 355
tioBs of immemorial reverence, how could it abandon ^hap. the cause which the longest prescription and the most solemn authority had combined to consecrate? With the GeraQaii..clergy, despite occasional quarrels, it had been on better terms than with the Jay aristo- cragy^* their heads had been the chief ministers of the crown ; the advocacies of their abbeys were the last source of imperial revenue to disappear. To turn against them now, when furiously assailed by here- tics ; to abrogate claims hallowed by antiquity and a hundred laws, would be to pronounce its own sen- tence, and the fall of the eternal city's spiritual do- minion must involve the fall of what still professed to be her temporal. Charles would have been glad to see some abuses corrected; but a broad line of policy was called for, and he cast in his lot with the Catholics*'.
Of many momentous results only a few need be noticed here. The reconstruction of the old imperial
^ See this brought out with avrebbe con tanto zelo mandati
great force in the very interest- alle fiamme que* novatori. Botto
ing work of Padre Tosti, Prole- da Lutero il vincolo di sugge-
gomeni alia Storia Universale deUa zione al Papa ed ai preti in fiitti
Chiesa, from which I quote one di religione, awenne che anche
passage, which bears directly on quelle che sommetteva il vassallo
the matter in hand : " II grido al barone, il barone al imperadore
della riforma olericale aveva un si allentasse. II popolo con la
eco terribile * in tutta la com- Bibbia in mano era prete, ves-
pagnia civile dei popoli : essa covo, e papa ; e se prima contri-
percuoteva le cime del laicale stato della prepotenza di chi gli
potere, e rimbalzava per tutta la soprastava, ricorreva al succes-
gerarchia sociale. Se Timpera- sore di San Pietro, ora ricorreva
dore Sigismondo nel concilio di a se stesso, avendogli commesse
Costanzanonavessefiutatequeste Fra Martino le chiavi del regno
consequenze nella eresia di Hus dei Cieli." — vol. ii. pp. 398, 9. e di Girolamo di Praga, forse non
Aa^
356 • THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap, system^ upon the basis of Hapsburg power, proved in • the end impossible. Yet for some years it had seemed
mimate actually accomplished. When the Smalkaldic league
fauure of . . •* •--
the reprea- had been dissolved and its leaders captured, the whole ofCha^ coun^ lay prostrate before Charles. He overawed the Diet at Augsburg by his Spanish soldiery : ^e forced formularies of doctrine upon the vanquished Protestants: he set up and pulled down whom he would through Germany, amid the muttered discon- tent of his own partisans. Then, as in the beginning of the year 1552, he lay at Innsbruck, fondly dream- ing that his work was done, waiting the spring weather to cross to Trent, where the Catholic fathers had again met to settle the world^s faith for it, news was suddenly brought that North Germany was in arms, and that the revolted Maurice of Saxony had seized Donauwerth, and was hurrying through the Bavarian Alps to surprise his sovereign. Charles rose and fled over the Brenner, far eastwards into the valleys of Carinthia : the council of Trent broke up in consternation: Europe saw and the Emperor ac- knowledged that in his fancied triumph over the spirit of revolution he had done no more than block up for the moment an irresistible torrent. When, this last effort to produce religious uniformiiy..Ly violence had failed as hopelessly as the previous devices of holding discussions of doctrine and calling a general council, a sort of armistice was agreed, to in 1554, which lasted in mutual fear and suspicion for more than sixty years. Germany remained divided into two omnipresent factions^ and so further than-^ver
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 357
from hafmonious action, or a tightening of the long- Chap. loosened bond of feudal allegiance. The states of ^^^^^- either creed being gathered into a league, there could -Owerwc- no longer be a recognized centre of authority for Germanic mdicidl or administrative purposes. Least of all could f «*^-*y«- a centre be^sought in the Emperor, the leader of the papal party, the suspected foe of every Protestant. Too closely watched to do anything of his own autho- rity, too much committed to one party to be accepted as a mediator by the other, he was driven to attain his own objects by falling in with the schemes and fiirthering the selfish ends of his adherents, by becom- ing the accomplice or the tool of the Jesuits. The Lutheran princes addressed themselves to reduce a power of which they had still an over-sensitive dread, and foimd when they exacted from each successive sovereign engagements more stringent than his pre- decessor's, that in this, and this alone, their Catholic brethren were not unwilling to join them. Thus obliged to strip himself one by one of the ancient privileges of his crown, the Emperor came to have little influence on the government except that ^riiich hislnlrigues might exercise. Nay, it became almost impossible to maintain a government at all. For when the Reformers found themselves outvoted at the Diet, they declared that in matters of religion a majority ought not to bind a minority. As the measures were few which did not admit of being re- duced to this category, for whatever benefited the Emperor or any other Catholic prince injured the Protestantfe, nothing could be done save by the assent
358
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
AUiance of the Pra testarUs with France.
Chap, of two bitterly hostile factions. Thus scarce any- * thing was done ; and even the courts of justice were stopped by the disputes that attended the appoint- ment of every judge or assessor.
In the foreign politics of Germany another result followed. Inferior in military force and organization, the Protestant princes at first provided for their safety by forming leagues among themselves. The device was an old one, and had been employed by the monarch himself before now, in despair at the effete and cumbrous forms of the imperial system. Soon they began to look beyond the Vosges, and found that France, burning heretics at home, was only too happy to smile on free opinions elsewhere. The alli- ance was easily struck ; Henry the Second assumed in 155^^ the title of ^^ Protector of the Germanic liberties,^^ and a pretext for interference was never wanting in future.
These were some of the visible political conse- ^spiru!^d 9.^<^^ces of the great religious schism of the six- it8 influence teenth century. But beyond and above them there
upon the 1, p J. J.1 n -1
Empire. ^^^ a change tar more momentous than any 01 its immediate results. There is perhaps no event in history which has been represented in so great a variety of lights as the Reformation. It has been called a revolt of the laity against the clergy, or of the Teutonic races against the Italians, or of the kingdoms of Europe against the universal monarchy of the Popes. Some have seen in it only a burst of long-repressed anger at the luxury of the prelates and the manifold abuses of the ecclesiastical system ;
The Re- formation
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 359
others a renewal of the youth of the church by a Chap. return to primitive forms of doctrine. All these ^^^ indeed to some extent it was ; but it was also something more profound, and fraught with mightier consequences than any of them. It was in its essence the assertion of the principle of indivi- duality: that is to say, of true spiritual free- dom. Hitherto the personal consciousness had been a faint and broken reflection of the universal; obedience had been held the first of religious duties ; truth had been conceived as a something external and positive, which the priesthood who were its stewards were to communicate to the passive layman, and whose saving virtue lay not in its being felt and known by him to be truth, but in a purely formal and unreasoning acceptance. The great principles which mediaeval Christianity still cherished were ob- scured by the limited, rigid, almost sensuous forms which had been forced on them in times of ignorance and barbarism. That which was in its nature ab- stract, had been able to survive only by taking a concrete expression. The universal consciousness became the Visible Church : the Visible Church hardened into a government and degenerated into a hierarchy. Holiness of heart and life was sought by outward works, by penances and pilgrimages, by gifts to the poor and to the clergy, wherein there dwelt often little enough of a charitable mind. The pre- sence of divine truth among men was symbolized under one aspect by the existence on earth of an infallible Vicar of God, the Pope ; under another, by
360 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap, the reception of the present Deity in the sacrifice of
1_ the mass ; in a third, by the doctrine that the priest^s
power to remit sins and administer the sacrament depended upon a transmission of miraculous gifts which can hardly be called other than physical. All this system of doctrine, which might, but for the position of the church as a worldly and therefore obstructive power, have expanded, renewed, and puri- fied itself during the four centuries that had elapsed since its completion*, and thus remained in haimony with the growing intelligence of mankind, was sud- denly rent in pieces by the convulsion of the Refor- mation, and flung away by the more religious and more progressive peoples of Europe. Tta^jEhich was external and concrete, was in all things to be super- seded by that which was inward and spiritual. It was proclaimed that the individual spirit, while it continued to mirror itself in the world-spirit, had nevertheless an independent existence as a centre of self-issuing force, and was to be in all things active rather than passive. Truth was no longer to be truth to the soul until it fehould have been by the soul recognized, and in some measure even created; but when so recognized and felt, it is able imder the form of faith to transcend outward works and to transform the dogmas of the understanding; it becomes the living principle within each man^s breast, infinite itself, and expressing itself infinitely through his thoughts and acts. He who as a spiritual being was
<* It was not till the end of substantiation was definitely the eleventh century that tran- established as a dogma.
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE, 361
delivered from the priest, and brought into direct Chap.
relation with the Divinity, needed not, as heretofore, ' _
to be enrolled a member of a visible congregation of
his fellows, that he might live a pure and useftil life
among them. Thus by the Reformation the Visible Effect of
Church as well as the priesthood lost that paramount l^an^^^
importance which had hitherto belonged to it, and the doc-
sank from being the depositary of all religious tradi- garding
tion, the source and centre of reliffious life, the arbiter *^ ^»«*^«
' . . . . .• Church.
of eternal happmess or misery, into a mere association
of Christian men, for the expression of mutual sym- pathy and the better attainment of certain common ends. Like those other doctrines which were now assailed by the Reformation, this mediaeval view of the nature of the Visible Church had been naturally, and so, it may be said, necessarily developed between the third and twelfth century, and must therefore have represented the thoughts and satisfied the wants of those times. By the Visible Church the flickering lamp of knowledge and literary culture, as well as of religion, had been fed and tended through the long night of the Dark Ages. But, like the whole theo- logical fabric of which it formed a part, it was now hard and unfruitful, identified with its own woi-st abuses, capable apparently of no further develope- ment, and unable to satisfy minds which in growing stronger had grown more conscious of their strength. Before the awakened zeal of the northern nations it stood a cold and lifeless system, whose organization as a hierarchy checked the free activity of thought, whose bestowal of worldly power and wealth on
362 THE HOL > / ' Y EMPIRE,
Chap, spiritual pastors drew them away from their proper
L duties, and which by maintaining alongside of the
civil magistracy a co-ordinate and rival government, maintained also that separation of the spiritual ele- ment in man from the secular, which had been so complete and so pernicious during the Middle Ages, which debases life, and severs religion from morality. Consequent The Reformation, it may be said, was a religious t%7^t^0Yement: and it is the Empire, not the Church, that we have here to consider. The distinction is only apparent. The Holy Empire is bu^ another name for the Visible Church. It has been shewn already how mediaeval theory constructed the State on the model of the church ; how the Roman Empire was the shadow of the Popedom — designed to rule men^s bodies as the pontiff ruled their souls. Both alike claimed obedience on the ground that Truth is One, and that where there is One faith there must be One government®. And, therefore, since it was this very prin^ple ef Formal Unity^ that the Refor- mation over,threNy> it .hecam^^ revolt iigainst despotism of eyeryjund ; it erected the standard of civil as well as of religious liberty, since both of them are needed, though needed in a. different measure, for the worthy developement of the individual spirit. The Empire had never been conspicuously the antagonist of popu- lar freedom, and was, even under Charles the Fifth, far le^s formidable to the commonalty than were the petty princes of Germany. But submission, and
« See the passages quoted in note ^, p. 107 ; and note ^ p. 1 19.
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 363
submission on the ground of indefeasible transmitted Chap. right, upon the ground of Catholic traditions and the ^^^^^' duty of the Christian magistrate to suffer heresy and schism as little as the parallel sins of treason and rebellion, had been its constant claim and watchword. Since the days of Julius Csesar it had passed through many phases, but in none of them had it ever been a constitutional monarchy, pledged to the recognition of popular rights. And hence the indirect tendency of the Reformation to narrow the province of govern- ment and exalt the privileges of the subject was as plainly adverse to the Empire as the Protestant claim of the right of private judgment was to the preten- sions of the Papacy and the priesthood.
The remark must not be omitted in passing, how Immediate much less than might have been expected the reli- J^f ^!/^. gious movement did at first actually effect in the maiion on
n .' •i-i ^'t' 1 o t political
way 01 promotmg either political progress or freedom ^^ ^g^^^-. of conscience. The habits of centuries were not to ®^ liberty. be unlearnt in a few years, and it was natural that ideas struggling into existence and activity should work erringly and imperfectly for a time. By a few inflammable minds liberty was carried into antino- mianism, and produced the wildest excesses of life and doctrine. Several fantastic sects arose, refusing to conform to the ordinary rules without which hu- man society could not subsist. But these commotions neither spread quickly nor lasted long. Far wider and more remarkable was the other error, if that can be called an error which was the almost unavoidable result of the circumstances of the time. The prin-
364 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap, ciples whict had led the Protestants to sever them- selves from the Boman Church, should have taught ConMct of them to bear with the opinions of others, and warned taru States, them from the attempt to connect agreement in doc- trine or manner of worship with the necessary forms of civil government. Still less ought they to have enforced that agreement by civil penalties : for faith, upon their own shewing, had no value save when it was freely given, A church which does not claim to be infallible is bound to allow that some part of the truth may possibly be with its adversaries : a church which permits or encourages human reason to apply itself to revelation has no right first to argue with people and then to punish them if they are not con- vinced. But whether it was that men only half saw what they had done, or that finding it hard enough to unrivet priestly fetters, they welcomed all the aid a temporal prince could give, the result was that
Ireligio.a> or rather religious creeds, began to be in- volved with politics more closely than had ever been the case before. Through the greater part of Chris- tendom wars of religion raged for a century or more, and down to our own days feelings of theological antipathy continue to affect the relations of the powers of Europe. In almost every country the form of doctrine which triumphed associated itself with the state, and maintained the despotic system of the Middle Ages, while it forsook the grounds on which that system had been based. It was thus that there arose National Churches, which were to be to the several countries of Europe that which the Church
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE, 365
Catholic had been to the world at larffe : churches, Chap.
. XVIII.
tEarts tCf'sia}^; ea6h of which was to be co-extensive . '—
with its respective state, was to enjoy landed wealth and exclusive political privilege, and was to be armed with coercive powers against recusants. It was not altogether easy to find a set of theoretical principles on which such churches might be made to rest, for they could not, like the old church, point to the historical transmission of their doctrines ; they could not claim to have in any one man or body of men an infallible organ of divine truth ; they could not even fall back upon general councils, or the argument, whatever it may be worth, '' Securus iudicat orbis terrarum/* But in practice these diflSculties were soon got over,, for the dominant party in each state, if it was not infallible, was at any rate quite sure that it wa& right, and could attribute the resistance of other sects to nothing but moral obliquity. The will of the sovereign, as in England, or the will of the majority,, as in Holland, Scandinavia, and Scotland, imposed upon each country a peculiar form of worship, and kept up the practices of mediaeval intolerance without their justification. Persecution, which might be at least excused in an infallible Catholic and Apostolic Church, was peculiarly odious when practised by those who were not catholic, who were no more apo- stolic than their neighbours, and who had just re- volted from the most ancient and venerable authority in the name of rights which they now denied to others. If union with the visible church by parti- cipation in a material sacrdment be necessary to
366 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap, eternal life, persecution may be held a. duty, a kind-
'_ ness to perishing souls. But if the kingdom of
heaven be in every sense a kingdom of the spirit, if saving faith be possible out of one visible body and under a diversity of external forms, persecution becomes at once a crime and a folly. Therefore the intolerance of Protestants, if its forms were less cruel than those practised by the Boman Catholics, was also far less defensible: for it had seldom anything better to allege on itd t)ehalf than motives of political expediency, or the mere head- strong passion of a ruler or a faction to silence the expression of any opinions but their own. To enlarge upon this theme, did space permit it, would not be to digress from the proper subject of this narrative. For the Empire, as has been said more than once already, was far less an institution than a theory or doctrine. And hence it is not too much to sav, that the ideas which have but recently ceased to prevail regarding the duty of the magistrate to compel uni- formity in doctrine and worship by the civil arm, may all be traced to the relation which that doctrine established between the Roman Church and the Roman Empire; to the conception, in fact, of an Empire Church itself.
Two of the ways in which the Reformation affected the Empire have been now described : its immediate political results, and its far more profound doctrinal importance, as implanting new ideas regarding the nature of freedom and the province of government. A third, though apparently almost superficial, cannot
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 367
be omitted. Its.jiame and its traditions^ little as they Chap. • retained of their former magic power^ were still such
as to excite the antipathy of the German reformers, ^'^fl^'^ Tll^<yfffl[ which the doctrine of the stipreroe import- formation ance of one faith and one body of the faithful had ^ «*«««">«
^ ana omo-
taken was the dominion of the ancient capital of the ciations of world through her spiritual head, the Roman bishop, ^P*»*«- and her temporal head, the Emperor. As the names of Roman and Christian had been once convertible, so long afterwards were those of Roman and Catholic. The Reformation, separating into its parts what had hitherto been one conception, attacked Romanism but not Catholicity, and formed religious communities which, while continuing to call themselves Christian, repudiated the form with which Christianity had been so long identified in the West. As the Empire was founded upon the assumption that the limits of Church and State are exactly co-extensive, a change which withdrew half of its subjects from the one body while they remained members of the other, transformed it utterly, destroyed the meaning and value of its old arrangements, and forced the Em- peror into a strange and incongruous position. hisProtestant subjects he was merely the head of the administration, to the Catholics he was also the De- fender and Advocate of their church. Thus from being chief of the whole state he became the chief of a party within it, the Corpus Catholicorum, ss opposed to the Corpus Evangelicorum ; he lost what had been liitherto his most holy claim to the obedience of the subject; the awakened feeling of
il
368 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap. German nationality was driven into hostility to an institution whose title and history bound it to the centre of foreign tyranny. After exulting for seven centuries in the heritage of Roman rule, the Teutonic nations cherished again the feelings with which their ancestors had resisted Julius CsBsar and Germanicus. Two_mutually xepugnant systems could ne^-^cist side by side without striving. to-.dfistEay-aae- another. The instincts of theological sympathy overcame the.dujtifisi of political allegiance, and men who were subjects both of the JEmpire and of their local prince, gave all their loyalty to him who espoused their doctrines and protected their worship. For in North Germany, princes as well as people were mostly Lutheran : in the southern and especially the south-eastern lands, wher§ the magnates held to the old faith, Protestajits were scarcely to be found except in the free cities. The same causes which injured the Emperor's position in Germany swept away the last semblance of his authority through other countries. In the great struggle which followed, the Protestants of England and France, of Holland and Sweden, thought of him only as the ally of Spain, of the Vatican, of the Jesuits ; and he of whom it had been believed a cen- tury before that by nothing but his existence was the coming of Antichrist on earth delayed, was in the eyes of the northern divines either Antichrist himself or Antichrist's foremost champion. The earthg^uake that opened a chasm in Germany^ was felt through Europe; its states and peoples marshalled themselves under two hostile banners, and with the
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 369
Empire^s expiring power vanished that united Chris- . G&ap.
tendom it had been created to lead^. L.
Some of the eflPects thus sketched began to shew Trottblesof themselves as early as that famous Diet of Worms, ^"'•**'^* from Luther's appearance at which, in a.d. 15^1, we may date the beginning of the Reformation. But just as the end of the religious conflict in England can hardly be placed earlier than the Revolution of \
1688, nor in France than the Revocation of the Edict \
of Nantes in 1685, so it was not till after more than \
a century of doubtful strife that the new order of things was my and fiaally established in Germany. The arrangements of Augsburg, like most treaties on the basis of uti possidetis, were no better than a hollow truce, satisfying no one, and consciously made to be broken. The church lands which Protestants had seized, and Jesuit confessors urged the Catholic
princes to reclaim, fnrnTRhprl a^i "nnA^fjiij^g ground
of quarrel : neither party yet knew the streilgth of its antagonist sufficiently to abstain from insulting or persecuting their modes of worship, and the smoulder- ing hate of half a century was kindled by the troubles of Bohemia into the Thirty Years^ War.
The imperial sceptre had now passed from the in- Thirty dolent and vacillating Rudolf II (1576-1612), the j^^ corrupt and reckless policy of whose ministers had done much to exasperate the already suspicious minds
' Henry VIII of England niae") without asking the Em-
when he rebelled against the peror's permission, in order to
Pope called himself King of Ire- shew that he repudiated the
land (his predecessors had used temporal as well the spiritual
only the title ** Dominus Hiber- dominion of £ome.
Bb
370 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Chap, of the Protestants^ into the firmer grasp of Ferdinand •^^^ • the Second*. Jealous, bigoted, implacable ; skilful in
F&'dmcmd forming and concealing his plans, resolute to ob- 1619-37. stinacy in carrying them out in action, the house of Hapsburg could have had no abler and no more un- popular leader in their second attempt to tul'n the German Empire into an Austrian military monarchy. They seemed for a time as near to the accomplish- ment of the project as Charles the Fifth had been. Plans of Leagued with Spain, backed by the Catholics of j^ MM»w Qgr^jajiy^ served by such a leader as W^11pnstein_j Ferdinand proposed . nothiog^less. than the extension I of the Empire .tQ-it»-«14-KeM:tg>tH!id: -the recoTcry of I his crown^s full prerogative over all its vassals. Sen- mark and Holland were ta be attacked by sea and laridTTtaly to be reconquered with the help of Spatin : Maximilian of Bavaria and Wallenstein to be rewarded with principalities in Pomerania and Mecklenburg. The latter general was all but miaster of Northern Germany when the successful resistance of Stralsund turned the wavering balance of the war. Soon after (a.d. 1630), Gustavus Adolphus crossed the Baltic, and saved Europe from an impending reign of the Jesuits. Ferdinand^s high-handed proceedings had already alarmed even the Catholic princes. Of his own authority he had put the Elector Palatine and other magnates to the ban of the Empire : he had transferred an electoral vote to Bavaria ; had treated the districts overrun by his generals as spoil of war, to be portioned out at his pleasure ; had unsettled all
8 Matthias, brother of Rudolf II, reigned from 161 1 till 1619.
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 371
possession by requiring the restitution of church pro- Chap. perty occupied since a.d. 1555. The Protestants were •^^^^^•
helpless; the Catholics, though they complained of ^/*^ the flagrant illegality of such conduct, did not dare to oppose it : the rescue of Germany was the work of the Swedish king. In four campaigns he destroyed the armies and the prestige of the Emperor ; devajs- tateSTTiis lands, emptied his treasury, and left him at lasi-so- enfeebled that no subsequent successes could make him again formidable. Such, nevertheless, was the selfishness and apathy of the Protestant princes, divided by the mutual jealousy of the Lutheran and the Calvinist party — some, like the Saxon elector, most infamous of his infamous house, bribed by the cunning Austrian ; others, afraid to stir lest a reverse should expose them unprotected to his vengeance — that the issue of the long protracted contest wbuld have gone against them but for the interference of France. It was the leading principle of Richelieu's policy to depress the house of Hapsburg and keep | Germany disunited : hence he fostered Protestantism abroad while^ampHn^ it down at home. Tiie Ll'luilil)^ he di3 not live to see was sealed in a.d. 1648, on the utter exhaustion of all the combatants, and the treaties ) of Miinster and Osnabriick were thenceforward the basis of the Germanic constitution.
B b 2
CHAPTER XIX.
THE PHACE OF WESTPHALIA : LAST STAGE IN THE DECLIKE OF THE EMPIRE.
Ch. XIX. The Peace of Westphalia is the first, and, with ~ ~ the exception perhaps of the Treaties of Vienna in West^- 1 815, the most important of those attempts to recon- 1*6 ' t ^ struct by diplomacy the European state>system which have played so large a part in modern history. It is important, however, not *as marking the intro- duction of new principles, but as winding up the struggle which had convulsed Germany since the re- volt of Luther; sealing its results, and closing defi- nitively the period of the Reformation. Although the causes of disunion which the religious movement called into being had now been at work for more than a hundred years, their effects were not fully seen till it became necessary to establish a system which should represent the altered relations of the German states. It may thus be said of this famous peace, as of the other so-called ^fundamental law of the Empire/ the Golden Bull, that it did no more than legalize a condition of things already in existence, but which by being legalized acquired new importance. To all
THE HOLY ROM All EMPIRE. 373
parties alike the result of the Thirty Years' War was Ch. Xix. thoroughly unsatisfactory : to the Protestants, who had lost Bohemia, and still were obliged to hold an inferior place in the electoral college and in the Diet : to the Catholics, who were forced to permit the exer- cise of heretical worship, and leave the church lands in the grasp of sacrilegious spoilers : to the princes, who could not throw off the burden of imperial supremacy: to the Emperor, who could turn that supremacy to no practical account. No other con- clusion was possible to a contest in which every one had been vanquished and no one victorious; which had ceased because while the reasons for war con- tinued the means of war had failed. Nevertheless, the substantial advantage remained with the German princes, for they gained the formal recognition of that territorial independence whose origin may be placed as far back as the days of Frederick the Second, and the maturity of which had been hastened by the events of the last preceding century. It was, indeed, not only recognized but justified as rightfiil and ne- cessary. For while the political situation, to use a current phrase, had changed within the last two hun- dred years, the eyes with which men regarded it had . changed still more. Never by their fiercest enemies in earlier times, not once by the Popes or the Lombard republicans in the heat of their strife with the Fran- conian and Swabian Csesars, had the Emperors been reproached as mere German kings, or their claim to be the lawful heirs of Rome denied. The Protestant jurists of the sixteenth or rather of the seventeenth
374 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XIX. century were the first persons who ventured to scoff at the pretended lordship of the world, and declare their Empire to be nothing more than a German monarchy, in dealing with which no superstitious reverence need prevent its subjects from making the best terms they could for themselves, and controlling a sovereign whose religious predilections made hina the friend of their enemies. The trea- It is very instructive to turn suddenly from Dante po^iw a^ ^^ Peter de Andlo to a book published shortly before LaTpide. a.d. 1 648, under the name of Hippolytus a Lapide *, and notice the matter-of-fact way, the almost con- temptuous spirit in which, disregarding the tradi- tional glories of the Empire, he comments on its actual condition and prospects. Hippolytus, the pseudonym which the jurist Chemnitz assumed, urges with violence almost superfluous, that the Germanic Constitution must be treated entirely as a native growth : that the ^^lex regia^' and the whole system of Justinianean absolutism which the Empe- rors had used so dexterously, were in their applications to Germany not merely incongruous but positively absurd. With eminent learning, Chemnitz examines the early history of the Empire, draws from the unceasing contests of the monarch with the nobi- lity the unexpected moral that the power of the former has been always dangerous, and is now more dangerous than ever, and then launches out into a long invective against the policy of the Hapsburgs,
• De Batione Statw in Imperio nostra Eomano-Germanico.
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 375
an invective which the ambition and harshness of Ch. XIX. the late .Emperor made only too plausible. The only real remedy for the evils that menace Germany he states concisely — ^^ domus Austriacae extirpatio '" but, failing this, he would have the Emperor^s pre- rogative restricted in every way, and provide means for resisting or dethroning him. It was by these views, which seem to have made a profound impres- sion in Germany, that the states, or rather France and Sweden acting on their behalf, were guided in the negotiations of Osnabriick and Miinster. By Rights of extorting a ftdl recognition of the sovereignty of ^^^^ all the princes. Catholics and Protestants alike, mihelHetyas their respective territories, they bound the Emperor ^^.d. ig^s. from any direct interference with the administration, either in particular districts or throughout the Em- pire. All affairs of public importance, including the rights of making war or peace, of levying contribu- tions, raising troops, building fortresses, passing or interpreting laws, were henceforth to be left entirely in the hands of the Diet. The Aulic Council, which had been sometimes the engine of imperial oppres- sion, and always of imperial intrigue, was so restricted as to be harmless for the future. The ^ reservata' of the Emperor were confined to the rights of granting titles and confirming tolls. In matters of religion, an exact though not perfectly reciprocal equality was established between the two chief ecclesiastical bodies, and the right of ^ Itio in partes,' that is to say, of deciding questions in which religion was involved by amicable negotiations between the Pro-
376
^ THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
[
Ch. XIX. testant and Catholic states^ instead of by a majority of votes in the Diet, was definitely conceded. Both Lutherans and Calvinists (now the Eyangelical Church of Germany), were declared free from all jurisdiction of the Pope or any Catholic prelate. Thus the last link which bound Germany to Rome was snapped, the last of the principles by virtue of which the Empire had existed was abandoned. For the Empire now contained and recognized as its members persons who formed a visible body at open war with the Holy Roman Church ; and its consti- tution admitted schismatics to a foil share in all those civil rights which, according to the doctrines of the early Middle Age, could be enjoyed by no one who was out of the communion of the Catholic Church. The Peace of Westphalia was therefore an abrogation of the sovereignty of Rome, and of the theory of Church and State with which the name of Rome was associated. And in this light was it regarded by Pope Innocent the Tenth, who com- manded his legate to protest against it, and subse- quently declared it void by the bull ^' Zelo domus
Dei^
>}
The transference of power within the Empire, from
*> Even then the Roman pontifi^ had lapsed into that scolding, anile tone (so unlike the fiery brevity of Hildebrand, or the stem pre- cision of Innocent III) which is now seldom absent from their pnblic utterances. Pope Inno- cent the Tenth pronounces the provisions of the treaty, 'Mpso
iure nulla, irrita, invalida, iniqua, iniusta, damnata, reprobata, in- ania, viribusque et effectu vacua, omnino fuisse, esse, et perpetuo fore." In spite of which they were observed.
This bull may be found in vol. xvii. of the Bullarvwm, It besu^ date Nov. 20th, a.d. 1648.
THE BOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 377
its head to its members, was a small matter compared Ch. XIX. with the losses which the Empire suffered as a whole, j^^ ^f The real gainers by the treaties of Westphalia were irnperial those who had borne the brunt of the battle against Ferdinand the Second and his son. To France were ceded Brisac, the Austrian part of Alsace, and the lands of the three bishoprics in Lorraine, Metz, Toul, and Verdun, which her armies had seized in a.d. 155a : to Sweden, northern Pomerania, Bremen, and Verden. There was, however, this difference between the posi- tion of the two, that whereas Sweden became a mem- ber of the Grerman Diet for what she received (as the king of Holland is now a member for Dutch Luxemburg), the acquisitions of France were delivered over to her in full sovereignty, and for ever severed from the Germanic body. And as it was by their aid that the liberties of the Protestants had been won, these two states obtained at the same time what was more valuable than territorial accessions — the right of interfering at imperial elections, and generally whenever the provisions of the treaties of Osnabriick and Miinster, which they had guaranteed, might be supposed to be endangered. The bounds of the Empire were further narrowed by the final separation of two countries, once integral parts of Germany, and up to this time legally members of her body. Holland and Switzerland were, in a.d. 1648, declared independent.
The Peace of Westphalia is an era in imperial history not less clearly marked than the coronation of Otto the Great, or the death of Frederick the
378 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XIX. Second. As from the days of Maximilian it had Germany bome a mixed or transitional character, well ex- qfterthe pressed by the name Romano-Germanic, so hence- forth it is in everything but title purely and solely a German Empire. Properly, indeed, it was no longer an Empire at all, but a Confederation, and that of the loosest sort. For it had no co^imon treasury, no efficient common tribunals*^, no means of coercing a refractory member^; its states were of different religions, were governed according to different forms, were administered judicially and financially without any regard to each other. The traveller in Central Germany now is amused to find, every hour or two, by the change in the soldiers' uniforms, and the colour of the stripes on the railway fences, that he has passed out of one Number of and into another of its miniature kingdoms. Much ^^n^Jnt niore surprised and embarrassed would he have been states : ef- a century ago, when, instead of the present thirty- a system (m> seven there were three hundred petty principalities ^^^"^^^V' between the Alps and the Baltic, each with its own laws, its own courts (in which the ceremonious pomp of Versailles was faintly reproduced), its little armies, its separate coinage, its tolls and custom-houses on the frontier, its crowd of meddlesome ^and pedantic
c The Imperial Chamber (Kam- The Aulic council was little more
mergericht) continued, with ire- efficient, and was generally dis-
quent and long interruptions, to liked as the tool of imperial in-
sit while the Empire lasted. But trigue.
its slowness and formality passed ^ The ' matricula' specifying
that of any other legal body the the quota of each state to the
world has yet seen, and it had imperial army could not be any
no power to enforce its sentences, longer employed.
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE, 379 .
officials, presided over by a prime minister who was Ch. XIX. generally the unworthy favourite of his prince, and the pensioner of some foreign court. This vicious system, which paralyzed the trade, the literature, and the political thought of Germany, had been forming itself for some time, but did not become fully established until the Peace of Westphalia, by emancipating the princes from imperial control, had made them despots in their own territories. The impoverishment of the inferior nobility and the decline of the commercial cities caused by a war that had lasted a whole generation, removed every counterpoise to the power of the electors and princes, and made absolutism supreme just where absolutism wants all its justification, in states too small to have any public opinion, states in which everything de- pends on the monarch, and the monarch depends on his favourites. After a. d. 1648 the provincial estates, or parliaments, became obsolete in most of these principalities, and powerless in the rest. Ger- many was forced to drink to its very dregs the cup of feudalism, feudalism from which all the feelings that once ennobled it had departed.
It is instructive to compare the results of ih& Feudalism system of feudality in the three chief countries ^^^Enalmd' modern Eiu'ope. In France, the feudal head ab- Germany. sorbed all the powers of the state, land left to the aristocracy only a few privileges, odious indeed, but politically worthless. In England, the mediaeval system expanded into a constitutional monarchy, where the oligarchy was still strong, but the com-
380 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE,
Ch. XIX. mons had won the full recognition of equal rights. In Germany, everything was taken from the sove- reign, and nothing given to the people; the repre- sentatives of those who had been fief-holders of the first and second rank before the Great Interregnum were now independent potentates; and what had been once a monarchy was now an aristocratic federation. The Diet, originally an assembly of magnates like our early English Parliaments, be- came in A.D. 1654 a permanent body, at which the electors, princes, and cities were represented by their envoys. In other words, it was now not a national council, but an international congress of diplomatists. Caum of Where the sacrifice of imperial, or rather federal tinuance rights to state rights was so complete, we may wonder oftJie Em- ti^at ^jig farce of an Empire should have been retained at all. A mere German Empire would probably have perished; but the Teutonic people coul^ not bring itself to abandon the venerable heritage of Rome. Moreover, the Germans are of all European peoples the most slow-moving and long-suflfering ; and as, if the Empire had fallen, something must have been erected in its place, they preferred to work on with I the clumsy machine so long as it would work at all. I Properly speaking, it has no history after this ; and the history of the particular states of Germany which take its place is one of the dreariest chapters in the annals of mankind. It would be hard to find, from the Peace of Westphalia to the French Revolution, a single grand character or a single noble enterprise;
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 381
a single sacrifice made to great public interests^ a Ch. XIX. single instance in which the welfare of nations was preferred to the selfish passions of their princes. The military history of those times will always be read with interest; but free and progressive countries have a history of peace not less rich and varied than that of war ; and when we ask for an account of the political life of Germany in the eighteenth century, we hear nothing but the scandals of buzzing courts, and the wrangling of diplomatists at never-ending congresses.
Useless and helpless as the Empire had become, it The Empire was not without its importance to the neighbouring j^^ance countries, with whose fortunes it had been linked by of power. the Peace of Westphalia. It was the pivot on which the political system of Europe was to revolve : the scales, so to speak, which marked the equipoise of power that had become the grand object of the policy of all states. This modem caricature of the plan by which the theorists of the fourteenth century had proposed to keep the world at peace, used means less noble and attained its end no better than theirs had done. No one will deny that it was and is desirable to prevent a universal monarchy in Europe. But it may be asked whether a system can be considered successful which allowed Frederick of Prussia to seize Silesia, which has not checked the aggressions of Russia and France upon their neighbours, which was for ever bartering and exchanging lands in every part of Europe without thought of the inhabitants, which permitted and has never been able to redress
382 THE BOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XIX. that greatest of public misfortunes, the partitionment of Poland. And if it be said that bad as things have been under this system, they would have been worse without it, it is hard to refrain from asking whether any evils could have been greater than those which the people of Europe have suflfered through constant wars with each other, and through the withdrawal, even in time of peace, of so large a part of their population from usefiil labour to be wasted in main- taining a standing army. Position of The result of the extended relations in which inEu^ne. Grcrmany now found herself to Europe, with two foreign kings never wanting an occasion, one of themi never the wish, to interfere, was that a spark from her set the Continent ablaze, while flames kindled elsewhere were sure to spread hither. Matters grew worse as her princes inherited or created so many thrones abroad. Holstein acquired Denmark, the Count Palatine Sweden, the Elector of Branden- burg Prussia, Saxony Poland, Hanover England, Austria Hungary and Bohemia. Thus the Empire seemed again about to embrace Europe; but in a sense far different from that which those words would have expressed under Charles and Otto. Its history for a century and a half is a dismal list of losses French and disgraces. The chief external danger was from aggreesum. Preji^ij influence, for a time supreme, always me- nacing. For though Lewis the Fourteenth, on whom, in A.D. 1658, half the electoral college wished to confer the imperial crown, was before the end of his life an object of intense hatred, oflScially entitled
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 383
" Hereditary enemy of the Holy Empire ®/^ France Ch. XIX. had nevertheless a strong party among the princes always at her beck. The Rhenish and Bavarian electors were her favourite tools. The ^reunions' begun in a.d. 1680, a pleasant euphemism for robbery in time of peace, added Strasburg and other places in Alsace, Lorraine, and Franche Comte to the monarchy of Lewis, and brought him nearer the heart of the Empire ; his ambition and cruelty were witnessed to by repeated wars, and by the devastation of the Rhine countries ; the ultimate though short-lived triumph of his policy was attained when Belleisle dictated the election of a.d. i74iJ. In the Turkish wars, when the princes left Vienna to be saved by the Polish Sobieski, the Empire^s weakness appeared in a still more pitiable light. There was, indeed. Weakness a. complete loss of hope and interest in the old ^4^^} system. The princes had been so long accustomed Germany, to consider themselves the natural foes of a central government, that a request made by it was sure to be disregarded; they aped in their petty courts the pomp and etiquette of Vienna or Paris, grumbling that they should be required to garrison the great frontier fortresses which alone protected them from an encroaching neighbour. The Free Cities had never recovered the famines and sieges of the Thirty Years' War : Hanseatic greatness had waned, and the south- em towns had sunk into languid oligarchies. All the vigour of the people in a somewhat stagnant age either found its sphere in rising states like the
^ Erhfeind des heiligen Iteichs,
384 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XIX. Prussia of Frederick the Great, or turned away from politics altogether into other channels. The Diet had become contemptible from the slowness with which it moved, and its tedious squabbles on matters the most frivolous. Many sittings were consumed in the discussion of a question regarding the time of keeping Easter, more ridiculous than that which had distracted the Western churches in the seventh century, the Ph)testants refusing to reckon by the reformed calendar because it was the work of a Pope. Col- lective action through the old organs was confessed impossible, when the common object of defence ag^nst France was sought by forming a league under the Emperor's presidency, and when at European con- gresses the Empire was not represented at all '. No change could come from the Emperor, whom the capitulation of a.d. 1658 deposed ipso facto if he violated its provisions. As Dohm« said, to keep him from doing harm, he was kept from doing any- thing.
Yet little was lost by his inactivity, for what could have been hoped from his action ? From the accession of Albert the Second, a.d. 1437, to the death of Charles the Sixth, a.d. 1742^, the sceptre had remained in the hands of one family. So far from being fit subjects for undistinguishing invective, the Hapsburg Empe- rors may be contrasted favourably with the contem- porary dynasties of France, Spain, or England. Their poUcy, viewed as a whole from the days of Rudolf
' Only the envoys of the several states were present at Utrecht in 1 713. B Quoted by Halisser.
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 385
downwards, had been neither conspicuously tyran- Ch. XIX. nical, nor faltering, nor dishonest. But it had been TheHa/pB always selfish. Entrusted with an office which miffht, ^^^9 ^w- if there be any power in those memories of the past arid their to which the champions of hereditary monarchy so^^^*^' constantly appeal, have stirred their sluggish souls with some enthusiasm for the heroes on whose throne they sat, some wish to advance the glory and the happiness of Germany, they had cared for nothing, sought nothing, used the Empire as an instrument for nothing but the attainment of their own private or dynastic ends. Placed on the eastern verge of Germany, the Hapsburgs had added to their ancient lands in Austria proper and Tyrol, non-German terri- tories far more extensive, and had thus become the chiefs of a separate and independent state. They endeavoured to reconcile its interests with the inter- ests of the Empire, so long as it seemed possible to recover part of the old imperial prerogative. But when such hopes were dashed by the defeats of the Thirty Years^ War, they hesitated no longer between an elective crown and the rule of their hereditary states, and comported themselves thenceforth in European politics not as the representatives of Ger- many, but as heads of the great Austrian monarchy. There would have been nothing culpable in this had they not at the same time continued to entangle Germany in wars with which she had no concern : to waste her strength in tedious combats with the Turks, or plunge her into a new war with France, not to defend her frontiers or recover the lands she
c c
386 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XIX. had lost, but that some scion of the house of Haps- burg might reign in Spain or Italy. Watching the whole course of their foreign policy, marking how in A, D. 1736 they had bartered away Lorraine for Tuscany, and seeing how at home they opposed every scheme of reform which could in the least de^ee trench upon their own prerogative, how they strove to obstruct the imperial chamber lest it should inter- fere with their own Aulic council, men were driven to separate the body of the Empire from the imperial office and its possessors^, and when plans for rein- vigorating the one failed, to leave the others to their Caum of fate. Still the old line clung to the crown with that trteS of Hapsburg gripe which has almost passed into a pro- th€ throne verb. Odious as Austria was, no one could despise ' her, or fancy it easy to shake her commanding posi- tion in Europe. Her alliances were fortunate: her designs were steadily pursued : her dismembered territories always returned to her. Though the throne continued strictly elective, it was impossible not to be influenced by long prescription. Projects were repeatedly* formed to set the Hapsburgs aside by electing a prince of some other line, or by passing a law that there should never be more than two, or
^ The distinction is well ex- Charles Vs successor shoald be
pressed by the German ^ Keich* chosen from some other. — ^Moser,
and * Kaiserthum/ to which we ROmischt Kayser. See the vari-
have unfortunately no terms to ous attempts of France in Moser.
correspond. The coronation engagements
' So the Elector of Saxony (Wahlcapitulation) of every Em- proposed in 153 a that Albert II, peror bound him not to attempt Frederick III, and Maximilian to make the throne hereditary having been all of one house, in his &mily.
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 387
four, successive Emperors of the same house. France^ Ch. XIX. ever and anon renewed her warnings to the electors, that their freedom was passing from them, and the sceptre becoming hereditary in one haughty family. But it was felt that a change would be difficult and disagreeable, and that the heavy expense and scanty revenues of the Empire required to be supported by larger patrimonial domains than most German princes possessed. The heads of states like Prussia and Hanover, states whose size and wealth would have made them suitable candidates, were Protestants, and so excluded both by the connection of the imperial office with the Church, and by the majority of Roman Catholics in the electoral college*, who, however jealous they might be of Austria, were led both by habit and sympathy to rally round her in moments of peril. The one occasion on which these considerations were disre- garded shewed their force. On the extinction of the male line of Hapsburg in the person of Charles the Sixth, the intrigues of the French envoy. Marshal Belleisle, procured the election of Charles Albert of Bavaria, who stood first among the Catholic princes.
^ In 1658 France offered to privilege. But when we con- subsidize the Elector of Bavaria sider that the peculiar relation if he would become Emperor. — in which the Emperor stood to Pfeffel, svb anno. the Holy Boman Church was
* Whether an Evangelical was one which lio heretic could hold,
eligible for the office of Emperor and that the coronation oaths
was a question often debated, could not have been taken by,
but never actually raised by the nor the coronation ceremonies
candidature of any but a Boman (among which was a sort of or-
Catholic prince. The " exacta dination) performed upon a Pro-
aequalitas'* conceded by the testant, the conclusion must be
Peace of Westphalia might ap- un&vourable to the claims of any
pear to include so important a but a Catholic.
QQ2
388 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. xrx. His reign was a succession of misfortunes and igno-
CharUs minies. Driven from Munich by the Austrians, the
1^4^''^^^" ^®^d ^f ^^® Holy Empire lived in Frankfort on the
bounty of France, cursed by the country on which
his ambition had brought the miseries of a protracted
Brands I y war°*. The choice in 1745 of Duke Francis of Lor-
1 745-1 7 5. j^jjjg^ husband of the archduchess of Austria and queen
of Hungary, Maria Theresa, was meant to restore the
crown to the only power capable of wearing it with
dignity: in Joseph the Second, her son, it again
rested on the brow of a Hapsburg**. In the war of
the Austrian succession, which followed on the death
of Charles the Sixth, the Empire as a body took no
part ; in the Seven Years' War its whole might broke
m « The bold Bavarian, in a luckless hour,
Tries the dread summits of Caesarian power.
With unexpected legions bursts away,
And sees defenceless realms receive his sway.
* * * * «
The baffled prince in honour's flattering bloom Of hasty greatness finds the fatal doom ; His foes* derision and his subjects' blame. And steals to death from anguish and from shame."
Johnson, Vanity of Hvman Wishes.
n The following nine reasons burg are given by Pfeffinger for the long continuance of the ( Vitriarvus lUustratus), writing Empire in the House of Haps- earlyin the eighteenth century: —
I. The great power of Austria.
3. Her wealth, now that the Empire was so poor.
3. The majority of Catholics among the electors. *
4. Her fortunate alliances.
5. Her moderation.
6. The memory of benefits conferred by her.
7. The example of evils that had followed a departure from
the blood of former Caesars.
8. The fear of the confusion that would ensue if she wer^
deprived of the crown.
9. Her own eagerness to have it.
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 389
in vain against one resolute member. Under Frederick Ch. XIX. the Great Prussia approved herself at least a match for g^^ France and Austria leagued against her, and the sem- ^^* blance of uniiy which the predominance of a single power had hitherto given to the Empire was replaced by the avowed rivalry of two military monarchies. The Emperor Joseph the Second, a sort of philosopher- Joaeph It, king, than whom few have more narrowly missed ^7os-i79o» greatness, made a desperate effort to set things right, striving to restore the disordered finances, to purge and vivify the Imperial Chamber. Nay, he renoimced the intolerant policy of his ancestors, quarrelled with the Pope'*, and presumed to visit Rome, whose streets heard once more the shout that had been silent for three centuries, '^ Evviva il nostro imperatore ! Siete a casa vostra : siete il padrone^*.^^ But his indiscreet haste was met by a sullen resistance, and he died disappointed in plans for which the time was not yet ripe, leaving no result save the league of princes which Frederick the Great had formed to oppose his designs on Bavaria. His successor, Leo- Leopold 11^ pold the Second, abandoned the projected reforms, 7^?"i^^' and a calm, the calm before the hurricane, settled o/e^^m- down again upon Germany. The existence of the^*^' Empire was almost forgotten by its subjects : there was nothing to remind them of it but a feudal in- vestiture now and then at Vienna (real feudal rights
o The Pope undertookft journey Him liis hand to kiss, Kaunitz
to Vienna to mollify Joseph, and took it and shook it. met with a sufficiently cold re- p " You are in your own
ception. When he saw the fa- house : be the master." mous minister Kaunitz and gave
390 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XIX. were obsolete^) ; a concourse of solemn old lawyers at Wetzlar puzzling over interminable suits ; and some thirty diplomatists at Regensburg ""^ the relics
Th£ Diet, of that Imperial Diet where once a hero-king, a Frederick or a Henry, enthroned amid mitred pre- lates and steel-clad barons, had issued laws for every tribe from the Mediterranean to the Baltic". The solemn triflings of this so-called "Diet of Depa- tation^'have probably never been equalled elsewhere*. Questions of precedence and title, questions whether the envoys of princes should have chairs of red cloth like those of the electors, or only of the less honour- able green, whether they should be served on gold or on silver, how many hawthorn boughs should be hung up before the door of each on May-day; these, and such as these, it was their chief employment not to settle but to discuss. The pedantic formalism of old Germany passed that of Spaniards or Turks ; it had now crushed under a mountain of rubbish whatever meaning or force its old institutions had contained. It is the penalty of greatness that its form should outlive its substance: that gilding and trappings should remain when that which they were meant to deck and clothe has departed. So our sloth or our timidity, not seeing that whatever is false must be also bad, maintains in being what once was good
<» Joseph 11 was foiled in his bild, eine Versammlungaus Pub- attempt to assert them. lizisten die mehr mit Formalien
' Cf. Putter, Historical Beve- als mit Sachen sich beschaftis^en,
lopement of t?i€ Political Conetitu- und, wie Hofhunde, den Mond
tion of ike Oerman Empire, vol. iii. anbellen."
" Frederick the Great said of ^ Haiisser, Dtvtscke Oeschickte;
the Diet, " Es ist ein Schatten- Introduction.
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 391
loDg after it has become helpless and hopeless: so Oh. XIX. now at the close of the eighteenth century, strings of sounding titles were all that was left of the Empire which Charles had founded, and Frederick adorned, and Dante sung.
The German mind, just beginning to put forth the Fedinge blossoms of its wondrous literature, turned away in q^^^ disgust from the spectacle of ceremonious imbecility people. more than Byzantine. National feeling seemed gone from princes and people alike. Lessing, who did more than any one else to create the German literary spirit, says, ^^ Of the love of country I have no con- ception : it appears to me at best a heroic weakness which I am right glad to be without^.^^ An Em- peror writes to his brother of France: "You must know that the annihilation of German nationality is a necessary leading principle of my policy *.^^ There were nevertheless persons who saw how fatal such a system was, lying like a nightmare on the people^s soul. Speaking of the union of princes formed by Frederick of Prussia to preserve the existing con- dition of things, Johannes von Miiller writes y : '^ If the German Union serves for nothing better than to maintain the status quOy it is against the eternal order of God, by which neither the physical nor the moral world remains for a moment in the status quo, but all is life and motion and progress. To exist without law or justice, without security from arbitrary im-
" Quoted by Hausser. y DeutschUinda Erwarttmgen
' Kotteck and Welcker, Stcuits vom Fiirstenhwnde, quoted in the LexUcont s. v. " Deutscheslteich." StcuUs Lexikon*
392 THE HOLY ROMAN* EMPIRE.
Gh. XIX. posts^ doubtfiil whether we can preserve from day to day our honours^ our liberties^ our rights^ our lives, helpless before superior force^ without a beneficial connection between our states^ without a national spirit at all^ this is the status quo of our nation. And it was this that the Union was meant to confirm. If it be this and nothing more^ then bethink you how when Israel saw that Rehoboam would not hearken^ the people gave answer to the king and spake^ ^What portion have we in David, or what inheritance in the son of Jesse? to your tents, O Israel: David, see to thine own house/ See then to your own houses, ye princes.^'
Nevertheless, though the Empire stood like a corpse brought forth &om some Egyptian sepul- chre, ready to crumble at a touch, there seemed no reason why it should not stand so for centuries more. Fate was kind, and slew it in the light.
CHAPTER XX.
PALL OF THE EMPIRE.
Goethe* has described the uneasiness with whieh^ Ch. XX. in the days of his childhood, the burghers of his prandsll, native Frankfort saw the walls of the Roman Hall 179^-1 So^« covered with the portraits of Emperor after Emperor, till space was left for few, at last for one. In a.d. 1792, Francis the Second mounted the throne of Augustus, and the last place was filled. Three years before there had arisen in the Western horizon a little doud, no bigger than a man^s hand, and now the heaven was black with storms of ruin. There was a prophecy^, dating from the first days of the Em- pire's decline, that when all things were falling to ruin, and wickedness rife in the world, a second Frankish Charles should rise as Emperor to purge and heal: to bring back peace and purify religion. If this was not exactly the mission of the new ruler of the West Franks, he was at least anxious to tread in the steps and revive the glories of the hero whose crown he professed to have inherited. It were a task superfluously easy to shew how delusive is that minute historical parallel of which every Parisian was full in
* Wahrheit und Dichtung, ^ M. Jordanis, Chronica, ap. book i. The Ediner Saal is stiU Schardium, Sylloge Tractattmrn. one of the sights of Frankfort.
394 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XX. A.D. 1804, the parallel between the heir of a long line Napolem, ^f fierce Teutonic chieftains, whose vigorous genius Empmyrof had seized what it could of the monkish learning of
the Wat. , .
the eighth century, and the son of the Corsican lawyer, with all the brilliance of a Frenchman and all the resolute profundity of an Italian, reared in, yet only half believing, the ideas of the Encyclo- paedists, swept up into the seat of absolute power by the whirlwind of a revolution. Alcuin and Talleyrand are not more unlike than are their masters. But though in the characters and temper of the men there is little resemblance, though their Empires agree in this only, and hardly even in this, that both were founded on conquest, there is nevertheless a sort of grand historical similarity between their posi- tions. Both were the leaders of fiery and warlike nations, the one still untamed as the creatures of their native woods, the other drunk with revolu- tionary fiiry. Both aspired to found, and seemed for a time to have succeeded in founding, universal monarchies. Both were gifted with a strong and susceptible imagination, which if it sometimes over- bore their judgment, was yet one of the truest and highest elements of their greatness. As the one looked back to the kings under the Jewish theocracy and the Emperors of Christian Rome, so the other thought to model himself afber Caesar and Charle- magne. For, useful as was the fancied precedent of the title and career of the great Carolingian to a chief determined to be king, yet unable to be king after the fashion of the Capets, and seductive as was
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE, 395
such a connexion to the imaginative vanity of the Ch. XX. French people, it was no studied purpose or simu- lating art that led Napoleon to remind his subjects so frequently of the hero he claimed to represent. No one who reads the records of his life can doubt Bditf of that he believed, as fully as he believed anything, ^j^j^ that the same destiny which had made France the w'ow ^^« centre of the modem world had also appointed him ^^ ckarle- to sit on the throne and carry out the projects otv^^^- Charles the Frank, to rule all Europe from Paris, as the Caesars had ruled it from Rome*'. It was in this belief that he went to the ancient capital of the Frankish Emperors to receive there the Austrian re- cognition of his imperial title; that he talked of ^^ revendicating^^ Catalonia and Aragon, because they had formed a part of the Carolingian realm, though they had never obeyed a Capet : that he undertook a journey to Nimeguen, where he had ordered the ancient palace to be restored, and inscribed on its walls his name below that of Charles : that he sum- moned the Pope to attend his coronation as Stephen had come ten centuries before to instal Pipin in the , throne of the last Merovingian*. The same desire
e In an address by Napoleon turellement rentrer, avec la Hol-
to the Senate in 1804, bearing lande et les villes ans^atiques,
date loth Frimaire (ist Dec), dans le sein de I'Empire." —
are the words, " Mes descendans (Euvres de Napoleon, torn. v. p.
conserveront longtemps ce tr6ne, 521.
le premier de I'univers." An- ^ Napoleon said on one occa-
swering a deputation from the sion, "Je n' 'ai pas succ^d^ a
Department of the Lippe, Aug. Louis Quatorze, roais a Charle-
8th, 181 1, **La Providence, qui magne." — Bourrienne, Vie de
a voulu que je r^tablisse le trdne NapoUorht iv. In 1804, shortly
de Charlemagne, vous a fait na- before he was crowned, he had
396 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XX. to be regfarded as lawful Emperor of the West shewed itself in his assumption of the Lombard crown at Milan; in the words of the decree by which he annexed Borne to the Empire^ revoking '^ the dona- tions which my predecessors^ the Emperors of the West, have made®;^' in the title '^King of Rome/^ which he bestowed on his ill«fated son, in imitation of the German *' King of the Romans^/' We are even told that it was at one time his intention to eject the Hapsburgs, and be chosen Roman Emperor in their stead. Had this been done, the analogy would have been complete between the position which the French ruler held to Austria now, and that in which Charles and Otto had stood to the feeble Attitude of Cassars of Byzantium. It was curious to see the ^^oardT^ head of the Roman church turning away from his Napoleon, ancient ally to the reviving power of France — France, where the Goddess of Reason had been worshipped eight years before— just as he had sought the help of the first Carolingians against his Lombard enemies^. The difference was indeed great between the feelings wherewith Pius the Seventh addressed his ^ very dear
the imperial msignia of Charles niasant lei ^tats romams k la
brought from the old Frankish France." — Proclamation iasued
capital, and exhibited them in a in 1809 : (Euvres, iv.
jeweller's shop in Paris, along ' See Appendix, Note C.
with those which had just been s Pope Hus YIl wrote to the
made fi>r his own coronation.—- First Consul, "Caarissime in
Bourrienne, ut supra. Chrl-ito Fill noster .... tarn
« " Je n' ai pu condUer ces perspecta sunt nobis tu» volon-
grands inter^ts (of political order tatis studia erga nos, ut ^uoHeS'
and the spiritual authority of the ewnqibe ope ali(|ua in rebus nostiit
Pope) qu' en annulant les dona- incUgemus, earn a te fidenter pe-
tions des Empereurs Fran9ais, tere non dubitare debeamus."—
xnes predeoesseurs, et en r^u- Quoted bj ^gidi
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 397
son in Christ/ and those that had pervaded the inter- Ch. XX. course of Pope Hadrian the First with the son of Pipin; just as the contrast is strange between the principles that shaped Napoleon's policy and the vision of a theocracy that had floated before the mind of Charles. Neither comparison is much to the advantage of the modern; but Pius might be pardoned for catching at any help in his distress^ and Napoleon found that the protectorship of the church strengthened his position in France, and gave him dignity in the eyes of Christendom^.
A swift succession of triumphs had left only one thing still preventing the fiill recognition of the Corsican warrior as sovereign of Western Europe, and that one was the existence of the old Romano- . Germanic Empire. Napoleon had not long assumed The French his new title when he began to mark a distinction ^^*''^- between "la France '^ and " TEmpire Frangaise.^' France had, since a.d. 1792, advanced to the Rhine, and, by the annexation of Piedmont, had overstepped the Alps; the French Empire included, besides the kingdom of Italy, a mass of dependent states, Naples,
^ Let us place side by side earn esse religionem quam longe
the letters of Hadrian to Charles maxinia pars dvium Gallicse rei-
in the Codex Carolintut, and the publicae profitetur.
following preamble to the Con- Snmmus pontifez pari modo
cordat of A.D. 1 801, between the recognoscit eandem religionem
First Consul and the Pope (taken maximam utilitatem maximum-
firom the JBullarmm Romanwm), que decus percepisse et hoc quo-
and mark the changes of a thou- que tempore prsestolari ex catho-
sand years. lico cultu in Gallia constitute,
" Gubemium reipublicse [Gal- necnon ex peculiari eius profes-
Ucsb] recognoscit religionem Ca- sione quam faciunt reipublicse
tholicam Apostolicam Komanam consules."
398 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Oh. XX. Holland, Switzerland, and many German principali- ties, the allies of France in the same sense in which the '^socii populi Romani^^ were allies of Rome^ When the last of Pitt's coalitions had been destroyed at Austerlitz, and Austria had made her submission by the peace of Presburg, the conqueror felt that his hour was come. He had now overcome two Em- perors, those of Austria and Russia, claiming to represent the old and the new Rome respectively, and had, in eighteen months, created more kings than the occupants of the Germanic throne in as many centuries. It was time, he thought, to sweep away obsolete pretensions, and claim the sole inherit- ance of that Western Empire, of which the titles and ceremonies of his court presented a grotesque imitation^. The task was an easy one after what Napoleon had been already accomplished. Previous wars and wa»y. treaties had so redistributed the territories and changed the constitution of the Germanic Empire that it could hardly be said to exist in anything but name. In French history Napoleon appears as the restorer of peace, the rebuilder of the shattered edifice of social order : the author of a code and an administrative system which the Bourbons who de- throned him were glad to preserve. Abroad he was the true child of the Revolution, and conquered only
^ Cf. Heeren, Political System^ to be mentioned in the corona-
vol. ii. 273. tion oath, was meant to be some-
^ He had arch-chancellors^ thing like the mediseval orders
arch-treasurers, and so forth, of knighthood : for whose con-
The , Legion of Honour, which nexion with the Empire see p.
was thought important enough 276.
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 399
to destroy. It was his mission — a mission more Ch. KX. beneficent in its result than in its means* — to break '.
lip in Germany and Italy the abominable system of petty states, to reawaken the spirit of the people, to sweep away the relics of an effete feudalism, and leave the ground clear for the growth of newer and better forms of political life. Since a. d. 1797, when Austria at Campo Formio perfidiously exchanged the Netherlands for Venetia, the work of destruction had gone on apace. All the German sovereigns w^st of the Rhine had been dispossessed, and their territories incorporated with France, while the rest of the country had been revolutionized by the arrangements of the peace of Luneville and the ^^ Indemnities,^' dictated by the French to the Diet in February 1803. New kingdoms were erected, electorates created and extinguished, the lesser princes mediatized, the free cities occupied by troops and bestowed on some neighbouring potentate. More than any other change, the secularization of the dominions of the prince-bishops and abbots proclaimed the fall of the old constitution, whose principles had required the existence of a spiritual alongside of the temporal aristocracy. The Emperor Francis, partly foreboding the events that were at hand, partly in order to meet Napoleon's assumption of the imperial name by depriving that name of its peculiar meaning, began in a. d. i 805 to style himself ^^ Hereditary Emperor qf Austria,'' while retaining at the same
^ K^apoleon's feelings towards the phrase he once used, ''II Germany may be gathered from faut depayser TAllemagne."
400 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XX. time his former title™. The next act of the drama
was one in which we may more readily pardon the ambition of a foreign conqueror than the traitorous selfishness of the German princes, who broke every tie of ancient friendship and duty to grovel at his The Confe- throne. By the Act of the Confederation ° of the tJuMine. B'hine — signed at Paris, July ij^th, 1806 — Bavaria, Wiirtemberg, Baden, and several other states, six- teen in all, withdrew from the body and repudiated the laws of the Empire, while on August ist the French envoy at Regensburg announced to the Diet that his master, who had consented to become Pro- tector of the Confederate princes, no longer recog- Ahdication nized the existence of the Empire. Francis the Emperor Second resolved at once to anticipate this new iJ'raTMJM//. Odoacer, and by a declaration, dated August 6th, 1806, resigned the imperial dignity. His deed states that finding it impossible, in the altered state of things, to fulfil the obligations imposed by his capi- tulation, he considers as dissolved the bonds which
™ Thus in documents issued by doubt originally drawn up in that
the Emperor during these two language. Napoleon is called
years he is styled " Koman Em- in one place " Der namliche
peror Elect, Hereditary Emperor Monarch, dessen Absichten sich
of Austria "(erwahlter Romischer stets mit den wahren Interessen
Kaiser, Erbkaiser von Oester- Deutschlands libereinstimmend
reich). gezeigt haben." The phrase * Ro-
n This Act of Confederation of man Empire' does not occur : we
the Rhine (Rheinbund) is printed hear only of the * German Em-
in Koch's TraitSs {contimied by pire,' * body of German states'
Scholl)^ vol. viii., and Meyer's (Staatskorper), and so forth. This
C(yrpvs Juris ConfoederationisOer- Confederation of the Rhine was
manicoi, vol. i. It has every ap- eventually joined by every Ger-
pearance of being a translation man State except Austria, Prussia,
from the French, and was no Electoral Hesse, and Brunswick.
THE M0L7 ROMAN EMPIRE. 401
attached him to the Germanic body, releases from Ch. XX. their allegiance the states who formed it, and retires to the government of his hereditary dominions imder the title of " Emperor of Austria <^/' Throughout, the term '' German Empire ^' {Deuteches Reich) is employed. But it was the crown of Augustus, of Constantine, of Charles, of Maximilian, that Francis of Hapsburg laid down, and a new era in the world's history was marked by the fall of its most venerable institution. One thousand and six years after Leo Eind of the the Pope had crowned the Frankish king, eighteen ^P*^^* hundred and fifty-eight years after Csesar had con- quered at Pharsalia, the Holy Roman Empire came to its end.
There was a time when this event would have been thought a sign that the last days of the world were at hand. But in the whirl of change that had bewildered men since a.d. 1789, it passed almost unnoticed. No one could yet fancy how things would end, or what sort of a new order would at last shape itself out of chaos. When Napoleon^s universal monarchy had dissolved, and old landmarks shewed themselves again above the receding waters, it was commonly supposed that the Empire would
^ Histoire dee TraiteSf vol. viii. which a tradesman, announcing The original may be found in the dissolution of an old partner- Meyer's Corpus Juris Oonfoedera- ship, solicits, and hopes by close tionis Oermanicce, vol. i. p. 70. attention to merit, a continuance It is a document in no way re- of his customers' patronage to his markable, except from the ludi- business, which will henceforth crous resemblance which its Ian- be carried on under the name of, guage suggests to the circular in &g., &c.
Dd
402 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XX. be re-established on its former footing p. Such was indeed the wish of many states, and among them of Hanover, representing Great Britain «. Though a simple revival of the old Romano-Germanic Empire was plainly out of the question, .it still appeared to them that Germany would be best off under the presidency of a single head, entrusted with the ancient office of maintaining peace among the mem- bers of the confederation. But the new kingdoms, Bavaria especially, were unwilling to admit a supe- rior; Prussia, elated at the glory she had won in the war of independence, would have disputed the crown with Austria; Austria herself cared little to resume an office shorn of much of its dignity, with duties to perform and no resources to enable her to discharge them. Use was therefore made of an expression in the Peace of Paris which spoke of uniting Germany by a federative bond', and the
Congrm of Congress of Vienna was decided by the wishes of *^"^* Austria to establish a Confederation. Thus was brought about the present German federal consti- tution, which is itself confessed, by the attempts so often made to reform it, to be a mere temporary
p Koch (Scholl), ffistoire des as a disembodied spirit to this
Traitds, vol. xi. p. 257, gqq. ; day. For it is clear that, tech-
Haiisser, Deutsckt Geschicktef nically speaking, the abdication
vol. iv. of a sovereign can destroy only
<i Great Britain had refused in his own rights^ and not the state
1806 to recognize the dissolution over which he premdes.
of the Empire. And it may in- ' " Les etato d'AUemagne se-
deed be maintained that in point ront independans et unis par
of law the Empire was never un lien federatif." — Histoire des
extinguished at all, but lives on TraitiSt xi. p. 257.
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 403
expedient, oppressive in the hands of the strong, Ch. XX. and useless for the protection of the weak. Of Isite years, one school of liberal politicians, justly indig- nant at their betrayal by the princes after the enthusiastic uprising of a. d. 1814, has aspired to the restoration of the Empire, either as an hereditary kingdom in the Prussian or some other family, or in a more republican fashion under a head elected by the people". The obstacles in the way of such plans are evidently very great; but even were the horizon more clear than it is, this would not be the place from which to scan it.
' The late king of Prussia was revolutionary Diet at Frankfort actually elected Emperor by tlie in 1848. He refused the crown.
hiii
CHAPTER XXL
CONCLTJSION-
Ca, XXI. AtTER the attempts already made to examine sepa* General lately each of the phases of the Empire^ little need summary, ^e said^ in conclusion, upon its nature and results in general* A general character can hardly help being* either vague or false. For the aspects which the Empire took are as many and as various as the ages and conditions of society during which it continued to exist. Among the exhausted peoples around the Mediterranean, whose national feeling had died out, whose faith was extinct or turned to superstition, whose thought and art was a faint imitation of the /^ Greek, there arises a huge despotism, first of a city, / then of an administrative system, which presses with / equal weight on all its subjects, and becomes to them I a religion as well as a govemmentr Just when the I mass is at length dissolving, the tribes of the North V come down, too rude to maintain the institutions they found subsisting, too few to introduce their own, and a weltering confusion follows, till the strong hand of the first Frankish Emperor raises the fallen image and bids the nations bow down to
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 405
j/p it once more. Under him it is for some brief space Ch. XXI.
I a theocracy; under his German successors the first
I of feudal kingdoms, the centre of European chivalry.
i As feudalism wanes, it is again transformed, and
i after promising for a time to become an hereditary
-. Hapsburg monarchy, sinks at last into the presi-
^^ _ dency, not more dignified than powerless, of an
international league. To us modems, a perpetuation Perpdua- under conditions so diverse of the same name andj^^g-^j^^ the same pretensions, appears at first sight absurd, Rome. a phantom too vain to impress the most superstitious mind. Closer examination will correct such a notion. No power was ever based on foundations so sure and deep as those which Rome laid during three cen- turies of conquest and four of undisturbed dominion. If her Empire had been an hereditary or local king- dom, it might have fallen with the extinction of the royal Hue, the conquest of the tribe, the destruction of the city to which it was attached. But it was not so limited. It was imperishable because it was universal; and when its power had ceased, it was remembered with awe and love by the races whose separate existence it had destroyed, because it had spared the weak while it smote down the strong; because it had granted equal rights to all, and closed against none of its subjects the path of honourable ambition. When the military power of the conquer- ing city had departed, her sway over the world of thought began : by her the theories of the Greeks had been reduced to practice ; by her the new religion had been embraced and organized ; her
406 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Oh. XXI. language^ her theology, her laws, her architecture made their way where the eagles of war had never flown, and with the spread of civilization have found new homes on the Granges and the Mississippi.
Parallel jfor is such a claim of government prolonged under changed conditions by any means a singular phenomenon. Titles sum up the political history of nations, and are as often causes as effects: if not insignificant now, how much less so in ages of ignorance and unreason. It would be an instructive, if it were not a tedious task, to examine the many pretensions that are still put forward to represent the Empire of Rome, all of them baseless, none of
Claims to them resultless. Austria clings to a name which
r&[>re8ent . , t • /^ j a.
theE<man gives her precedence m Crermany, and was wont. Empire, while she held Lombardy, to justify her position ustria. tjjgpg ijy invoking the feudal rights of the Hohen- staufen *. With no more legal right than the prince of Reuss or the landgrave of Homburg might pre- tend to, she has assumed the arms and devices of the old Empire, and being almost the youngest of European monarchies, is respected as the oldest and France. most Conservative. Bonapartean France, as the self- appointed heir of the Carolingians, grasped for a time the sceptre of the West, and still aspires to hold the balance of European politics, and be recognized as the leader and patron of the so-called Latin races on both sides of the Atlantic^. Professing the creed
> See an article in the National ^ See Louis Napoleon's letter
Review for January, 1861, en- to General Forey, explaining
titled " Frederick I, King of the object of the expedition to
Italy." ' Mexico.
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 407
of Byzantium, Russia claims the crown of the Byzan- Ch. XXI. tine Caesars, and trusts that the capital which pro- Russia. phecy has promised for a thousand years will not be long withheld. The doctrine of Panslavism, under an imperial head of the whole Eastern church, has become a formidable engine of aggression in the hands of a crafty and warlike despotism. Another Greece. testimony to the enduring influence of old political combinations is supplied by the eagerness with which modern Hellas has embraced the notion of gathering all the Greek races into a revived Empire of the East, with its capital on the Bosphorus. Nay, the The Turks. intruding Ottoman himself, different in faith as well as in blood, has more than once declared himself the representative of the Eastern Csesars, whose dominion he extinguished. Solynian the Magnificent assumed the name of Emperor, and refused it to Charles the Fifth : his successors were long pre- ceded through the stjeets of Constantinople by twelve officers, bearing straws aloft, a faint sem- blance of the consular fasces that had escorted a Quinctius or a Fabius through the Roman forum. Yet in no one of these cases has there been that apparent legality of title which the shouts of the people and the benediction of the pontiff conveyed to Charles and Otto^.
These examples, however, are minor parallels : the
c One may also compare the quishment of the title " King of retention of the office of consul Great Britain, France, and Tre- at Borne till the time of Jus- land," seriously distressed many tinian : indeed it even survived excellent persons, his formal abolition. The relin-
408 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XXI. complement and illastration of the history of the PairaUdof ^^V^^^ is to be found in that of the Holy See. the Papacy, The Papacy, whose spiritual power was itself the offspring of Rome's temporal dominion, evoked the phantom of her parent, used it, obeyed it, rebelled and overthrew it, in its old age once more embraced it, till in its downfall she has heard the knell of her own approaching doom. Both rose in an age when the human spirit was utterly prostrated before au- thority and tradition, when private judgment was impossible to most, and sinful to all. Those who believed the miracles recorded in the Acta Sanetomm, and did not question the Isidorian decretals, might well recognize as ordained of God the twofold au- thority of Rome, proved as it seemed by so many texts of Scripture, and confirmed by five centuries of undisputed possession.
Both sanctioned and satisfied th^ passion of the age for unity. Ferocity, violence, disorder, were the con- spicuous evils of that time : hence all the aspirations of the good were for something which, breaking the force of passion and increasing the force of sympathy, should teach the stubborn wills to sacrifice themselves in the view of a common purpose. To those men, moreover, unable to rise above the sensuous, not see- ing the true connexion or the true difference of the spiritual and the secular, the idea of the Visible Church was fuU of awfiil meaning. Solitary thought was help- less, and strove to lose itself in the aggregate, since it could not create for itself that which was universal. The schism that severed a man from the congrega-
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE, 409
tion of the faitliful on earth was hardly less dreadAil .ch. XXI. than the heresy which excluded him from the com- pany of the blessed in heaven. He who kept not his appointed place in the ranks of the church militant had no right to swell the rejoicing anthems of the church triumphant. Here, as in so many 0 other cases, the continued use of traditional language seems to have prevented us from seeing how great is the difference between our own times and those in which the phrases we repeat were first used, and used in full sincerity. Whether the world is better or worse for the change which has passed upon its feelings in these matters is another question : all that it is necessary to note here is that the change is a profound and pervading one. Obedience, almost the first of mediaeval virtues, is now often s|>oken of as if it were fit uuly for slaves ur"tools. Instead of prais- ing, men are wont to condemn the submission of the individual will, the surrender of the indivjJual belief, to the..jwill or the belief of tJi6 community. Some persons declare variety of opimon to be a positive good. The great mass have certainly no longing for an abstract unity of faith. They have no horror of schism. They do not, cannot, understand the intense fascination which the idea of one all-per- vading church exercised upon their mediaeval fore- fathers. A life in the church, for the church, through the church; a life which she blessed in mass at morning and sent to peaceful rest by the vesper hymn; a life which she supported by the constantly recurring stimulus of the sacraments.
410 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XXI. relieving it by confession^ purifying it by penance^ admonishing it by the presentation of visible objects for contemplation and worship, — ^this was the life which they of the middle ages conceived of as the rightful life for nmn ; it was the actual life of many, the ideal of all. The imseen world was so unceas- ingly pointed to, and its dependence on the seen so intensely felt, that the barrier between the two seemed to disappear. The church was not merely the portal to heaven; it was heaven anticipated; it was already self-gathered and complete. In one sentence from a famous mediaeval document may be found a key to much which seems strangest to us in the feelings of the Middle Ages : " The church is dearer to God than heaven. For the church does not exist for the sake of heaven, but conversely, heaven for the sake of the church *.^^
Again, both Empire and Papacy rested on opinion rather than on force, and when the struggle of the eleventh century came, the Empire fell, because its rival^s hold over the souls of men was firmer, more direct, enforced by penalties more terrible than the death of the body. The ecclesiastical body under Alexander and Innocent was animated by a loftier spirit and more wholly devoted to a single aim than the knights and nobles who followed the banner of the Swabian CsBsars. Its allegiance was undivided ; it comprehended the principles for which it fought :
^ " Ipsa enim ecclesia cliarior lum." Letter of the four XJni-
Deo est quam ccelum. Non enim versities to Wenzel and Urban
propter coelum ecclesia, sed e VIII, vid. supra, note ^ p. 114. converso propter ecclesiam coe-
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE, 411
they trembled at even while they resisted the spiritual Oh. XXI. power.
Both sprang from what might be called the acci- Papacy dent of name. The power of the great Latin patri- ^^^^ ^^_ archate was a Form: the ffhost. it has been said, i>«^«<=^ ««
, , perpetua-
of the older Empire, favom-ed in its growth by tiom of a circumstances, but really vital because capable of"*"*^' wonderful adaptation to the character and wants of the time. So too, though far less perfectly, was the Empire. Its Form was the tradition of the uni- versal rule of Rome; it met the needs of successive centuries by civilizing barbarous peoples, by main- taining imity in confusion and disorganization, by controlling brute violence through the sanction© of a higher power, by being made the keystone of a gigantic feudal arch, by assuming in its old age the presidency of a European confederation. And the history of both, as it shews the power of ancient names and forms, shews also within what limits such a perpetuation is possible, and how it sometimes deceives men, b}'- preserving the shadow while it loses the substance. Perpetuation itself, what is it but the expression of the belief of mankind, a belief incessantly corrected yet never weakened, that their old institutions do and may continue to subsist un- changed, that what has served their fathers will do well enough for them, that it is possible to make a system perfect and abide in it for ever? Of all political instincts this is perhaps the strongest ; often useful, often grossly abused, but never so natural and so fitting as when it leads men who feel themselves
412 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE,
Ch. XXT. inferior to their predecessors^ to save what they can from the wreck of a civilization higher than their own. It was thus that both Papacy and Empire /•were maintained by the generations who had no type I of greatness and wisdom save that which they asso- ^ ciated with the name of Rome. And therefore it is that no examples shew so convincingly how hope- less are all such attempts to preserve in life a system which arose out of ideas and under conditions that have passed away. Though it never could have existed save as a prolongation, though it was and remained through the Middle Ages an anachronism, the Empire of the tenth century had little in common with the Empire of the second. Much more was the Papacy, though it too hankered after the forms and titles of antiquity, in reality a new creation. And in the same proportion as it was new, and repre- sented the spirit not of a past age but of its own, was it a power stronger and more enduring than the Empire. More enduring, because younger, and so in fuller harmony with the feelings of its con- temporaries: stronger, because at the head of the great ecclesiastical body, in and through which, rather than through secular life, all the intelligence and political activity of the Middle Ages sought its expression. The famous simile of Gregory the Seventh is that which best describes the Empire and the Popedom. They were indeed the " two lights in the firmament of the militant church,^^ the lights which illumined and ruled the world all through the Middle Ages. And as moonlight is to sunlight, so was the
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 413
Empire to the Papacy- The rays of the one were bor- Oh. XXI. rowed, feeble, often intemip.ted : the other shone with " ~~~ an unquenchable brilliance that was all her own.
The Empire, it has just been said, was never truly In what mediaeval. Was it then Roman in anything tut*^^^^^ name ? and was that name anything better than a Itoman, piece of fantastic antiquarianism ? It is easy to draw & comparison between the Antonines and the Ottos which should shew nothing but unlikeness. What the Empire was in the second century every one knows. In the tenth it was a feudal monarchy, resting on a strong territorial oligarchy. Its chiefs were barbarians, the sons of those who had destroyed Varus and baffled Germanicus, sometimes unable even to use the tongue of Rome. Its powers were limited. It could scarcely be said to have a regular organi- zation at all, whether judicial or administrative. It was consecrated to the defence, nay, it existed by virtue of the religion which Trajan and Marcus had persecuted. Nevertheless, when the contrast has been stated in the strongest terms, there will remain points of resemblance. The thoroughly Roman idea of universal denationalization survived, and drew with it liiat of a certain equality among all free subjects. It has been remarked already, that the world's highest dignity was for many centuries the only civil office to which any free-born Christian was legally eligible. And there was also, during the earlier ages, that indomitable vigour which might have made Trajan or Severus seek their true successors among the woods of Germany rather
4 1 4 THE HOL 7 ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XXI. than in the palaces of Byzantium, where every office and name and custom had floated down from the court of Constantine in a stream of unbroken legi- ' timacy. The ceremonies of Henry the SeventVs coronation would have been strange indeed to Caius Julius Csesar Octavianus Augustus; but how much nobler, how much more Roman in force and truth than the childish and unmeaning forms with which a Palaeologus was installed ! Not in purple buskins lay the dignity of the Luxemburger®. To such a boast the Germanic Empire had long ere its death lost right : it had lived on, when honour and nature bade it die : it had become what the Empire of the Moguls was, and that of the Ottomans is now, a curious relic of antiquity, over which the imaginative might muse, but which the mass of men would pugh aside with impatient contempt. But institutions, like men, should be judged by their prime. Imperial- The comparison of the old Roman Empire with its Jtoman Germanic representative raises a question which has French, been a good deal convassed of late years. That won- diwval derful system which Julius Caesar and his subtle nephew erected upon the ruins of the republican con- stitution of Rome has been made the type of a certain form of government and of a certain set of social as well as political arrangements, to which, or rather to the theory whereof they are a part, there has been given the name of Imperialism. The sacrifice of the individual to the mass, the concentration of all legis- lative and judicial powers in the person of the sove-
« Von Raumer, Geschickte der ffohenstaufeTif v.
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 415
reign, the centralization of the administrative system, Ch. XXI. the maintenance of order by a large military force, the substitution of the influence of public opinion for the control of representative assemblies, are commonly taken, whether rightly or wrongly, to characterize that theory. Its enemies cannot deny that it has often in past times given and may again give to nations a sudden and violent access of energy ; that to it pecu- liarly belongs the glory of war and conquest ; that it hafi a better title to respect in the ease with which it may be made, as it was by the Flavian and Antonine . Caesars of old, and at the beginning of this century by Napoleon in France, the instrument of compre- hensive reforms in law and government. The parallel between the Roman world under the Caesars and the French people now is perhaps less perfect than those who dilate upon it fancy. That equalizing despotism which was a good to a medley of tribes, the force of whose national life had spent itself and left them lan- guid, yet restless, with all the evils of isolation and none of its advantages, is not necessarily a good to a country already the strongest and most united in Europe, a country where the administration is only too perfect, and the pressure of social uniformity only too strong. But whether it be a good or an evil, no one can doubt that France represents, and has always represented, the imperialist spirit of Rome far more truly than those whom the Middle Ages recognized as the legitimate heirs of her name and dominion. In the political character of the French people, whe- ther it be the result of the five centuries of Roman
416 THU HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XXI. rule in Gaul, or rather due to the original instincts of the Gallic race, is to be found their claim, a claim better founded than any which Napoleon put forward, Political to be the Romans' of the modem world. The ten- ^^^frm- dci^cy ^f *l^® Teuton was and is to the independence tmic and of the individual life, to the mutual repulsion, if the
GroXlic . .
y„^^ phrase may be permitted, of the social atoms, as con-
trasted with Keltic and so-called Romanic peoples, among whom the unit is wholly absorbed in the mass, who live possessed by a common idea which they are driven to realize in the concrete. Teutonic states have been little more successful than their neighbours in the establishment of free constitutions. Their assemblies meet, and vote, and are dissolved, and nothing comes of it : their citizens endure without greatly resenting outrages that would raise the more excitable French or Italians in revolt. But, whatever may have been the form of government, the body of the people have always enjoyed a freedom of thought which has made them careless of politics, and the absolutism of the Elbe is at this day no more like that of the Seine- than a revolution at Dresden is to a revolution at Paris. The rule of the Hohenstaufen had nothing either of the good or the evil of the im- perialism which Tacitus painted, or of that which the panegyrists of the present system in France paint in colours somewhat different from his.
There was, nevertheless, such a thing as mediaeval imperialism, a theory of the nature of the state and the
' Meaning thereby not the lican days, but the Italo-Hellenic citizens of Borne in har repub- subjects of the Boman Empire.
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 417
best form of government^ which hasbeen described once Ch. XXI. already, and need not be described again. It is enough ^E^^nj^T to say, that from three leading principles all its proper- principles ties may be derived. The first and the least essential ^ledicevdl was the existence of the state as a monarchy. The ^^pire, second was the exact coincidence of the staters limits, and the perfect harmony of its workings with the limits and the workings of the church. The third was its universality. These three were vital. Forms of political organization, the presence or absence of constitutional checks, the degree of liberty enjoyed by the subject, the rights conceded to local autho- rities, all these were matters of secondary importance. But although there brooded over all the shadow of a despotism, it was a despotism not of the sword but of law ; a despotism not chilling and blighting, but one which, in Germany at least, looked with favour on municipal freedom, and everywhere did its best for learning, for religion, for intelligence ; a despotism not hereditary, but one which constantly maintained in theory the principle that he should rule who was found the fittest. To praise or to decry the Empire as a despotic power is to misunderstand it altogether. We need not, because an unbounded prerogative was useful in ages of turbulence, advocate it now; nor need we, with Sismondi, blame the Frankish con- queror because he granted no 'constitutional charter' to all the nations that obeyed him. Like the Papacy, the Empire expressed the political ideas of a time, and not of all time : like the Papacy, it fell when those ideas changed; when men became more capabie of ' — " E e
4 1 8 THE HOL 7 ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XXI. rational liberty; when thought grew stronger, and the spiritual nature shook itself more free from the bonds of sense.
Influence The influence of the Empire upon Germany, is a
Holy Emr subject too wide to be more than glanced at here.
pire on There is much to make it appear altogether unfortu- ermany. ^^^^^ y^^ many generations the flower of Teutonic chivalry crossed the Alps to perish by the sword of the Lombards, or the deadlier fevers of Rome. Italy terribly avenged the wrongs she suffered. Those who destroyed the national existence of another people forfeited their own: the German kingdom, crushed beneath the weight of the Roman Empire, could never recover strength enough to form a compact and united monarchy, such as arose elsewhere in Europe : the race whom their neighbours had feared and obeyed till the fourteenth century have seen themselves ever since the prey of intestine feuds and their country the battlefield of E&rope. Spoiled and insulted by a neighbour restlessly aggressive and superior in all the arts of success, they have come to regard Prance as the persecuted Slave regards them. The want of national union and political liberty from which Ger- many suffers cannot be attributed to the differences of her races ; for, conspicuous as that difference was in the days of Otto the Great, it was no greater than in France, where intruding Franks, Goths, Burgun- dians, and Northmen were mingled with primitive Kelts and Basques; not so great as in Spain, or Italy, or Britain. Rather is it due to the decline of the central government, which was induced by its
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 419
strife with the Popedom, its endless Italian wars, . Ch. XXL and the passion for universal dominion which made "
it the assailant of all the neighbouring countries. The absence or the weakness of the monarch enabled his feudal vassals to establish petty despotisms, de- barring the nation from united political action, and greatly retarding the emancipation of the commons. Thus, while the princes became shamelessly selfish, justifying their resistance to the throne as the de- fence of their own liberty — ^liberty to oppress the subject — ^and ready on the least occasion to throw themselves into the arms of France, the body of the people were deprived of all political training, and find the want of such experience baffle their efibrts to this day.
For these misfortunes, however, there has not been wanting some compensation. The inheritance of the Roman Empire made the Germans the ruling race of Europe, and the brilliance of that glorious dawn can never fade entirely from their name. A peaceful people now, submissive to paternal government, and given to the quiet enjoyments of art, music, and medi- tation, they solace themselves with memories of the time when their conquering chivalry was the terror of the Gaul and the Slave, the Lombard and the Saracen. The national life received a keen stimulus from the sense of exaltation which victory brought, afad from the intercourse with countries where the old civilization had not wholly perished. It was this connexion with Italy that raised the German lands out of barbarism, and did for them the work which
E e 2
420 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE,
Ch. XXI. Roman conquest had performed in Gaul, Spain, and Britain. From the Empire flowed all the richness of their mediaeval life and literature : it first awoke in them a consciousness of national existence ; its history has inspired and served as material to their poetry ; to many ardent politicians the splendours of the past have become the beacon of the future^. There is a bright side even to their political disunion. When they complain that they are not a nation, and sigh for the harmony of feeUng and singleness of aim which their great rival displays, the example of the Greeks may comfort them. To the vaiiety which so many small governments have produced may be partly attributed the breadth of developement in Ger- man thought and literature, by virtue of which it transcends the French hardly less than the Greek surpassed the Roman. Paris no doubt is great, but a country may lose as well as gain by the predomi- nance of a single city ; and Germany need not mourn that she alone among modem states has not and never has had a capital.
The merits of the old Empire were not long since the subject of a brisk controversy among several Ger- man professors of history i^. The spokesmen of the Austrian or Roman Catholic party, a pai-ty not less powerful in some of the minor South German States
» Take, among many instances, illustration,
those of the preface to Giese- *» See especially Von Sybel, Die
brecht. Die Deutsche Kaiser- Deutsche Nation und das Kaiser-
zeit ; and Rotteck and Welcker's reich ; an<l the answers of Ficker
Starts Lextkon. The German and Von Wydeubrugk. newspapers are indeed sufficient
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 421
than it is in Vienna, claimed for the Hapsburg Ch. XXI. monarchy the honour of being the legitimate repre- ^ ^^ sentative of the medisBval Empire, and declared that as heir of only by again accepting Hapsburg leadership could Empire! Germany win back the glory and the strength that once were hers. The North German liberals ironically applauded the comparison. '^Yes/' they replied, '^ your Austrian Empire, as it calls itself, is the true daughter of the old despotism : not less tyrannical, not less aggressive, not less retrograde ; like its pro- genitor, the friend of priests, the enemy of free thought, the trampler upon the national feeling of the peoples that obey it. It is you whose selfish and anti-national policy blasts the hope of German unity now, as Otto and Frederick blasted it long ago by their schemes of foreign conquest. The dream of Empire has been our bane from first to last.^^ It is possible, one may hope, to escape the alternative of admiring the Austrian Empire or denouncing the Holy Roman. Austria has indeed, in some things, but too faithfully reproduced the policy of the Saxon and Swabian Caesars. Like her, they oppressed and insulted the Italian people : but it was in the defence of rights which the Italians themselves admitted. Like her, they lusted after a dominion over the races on their borders, but that dominion was to them a means of spreading civilizq-tion and religion in savage countries, not of pampering upon their revenues a hated court and aristocracy. Like her, they strove to maintain a strong government at home, but they did it when a strong government was the first of
422 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XXI. political blessings. Like her, they gathered and maintained vast armies ; but those armies were com- posed of knights and barons who lived for war alone, not of peasants torn away from useful labour and condemned to the cruel task of perpetuating their own bondage by crushing the aspirations of another nationality. They sinned grievously, no doubt, but they sinned in the dim twilight of a half-barbarous age, not in the noonday blaze of modern civilization. The enthusiasm for mediaeval faith and simplicity which was so fervid some years ago has run its course, and is not likely soon to revive. He who reads the history of the Middle Ages will not deny that its heroes, even the best of them, were in some respects little better than savages. But when he approaches more recent times, and sees how, during the last three hundred years, kings have dealt with their subjects and with each other, he will forget the ferocity of the Middle Ages, in horror at the heart- lessness, the treachery, the injustice all the more odious because it sometimes wears the mask of legality, which disgraces the annals of the military monarchies of Europe. With regard, however, to the pretensions of modern Austria, the truth is that this dispute about the worth of the old system has no bearing upon them at all. The day of imperial greatness was already past when Rudolf the first Hapsburg reached the throne j while during what may be called the Austrian period, from Maximilian to Francis II, the Holy Empire was to Germany a mere clog and incumbrance, whidh the unhappy
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 423
nation bore because she knew not how to rid herself Ch. XXI. of it. The Germans are welcome to appeal to the old Empire to prove that they were once a united people. Nor is there any harm in their comparing the politics of the twelfth century with those of the nineteenth, although to argue from the one to the other seems to betray a want of historical judgment. But the one thing which is wholly absurd is to make Francis Joseph of Austria the successor of Frederick of Hohenstaufen, and justify the most sordid and ungenial of modem despotisms by the example of the mirror of medisBval chivalry, the noblest creation of medisBval thought.
We are not yet far enough from the Empire to Bearing comprehend or state rightly its bearing on European %^^y^ progress. The mountain lies behind us, but miles upm the must be traversed before we can take in at a glance Europe. its peaks and slopes and buttresses, picture it« form, and conjecture its height. Of the perpetuation among the peoples of the West of the arts and literature of Rome it was both an effect and a cause, a cause only less powerful than the church. It would be endless to shew in how many ways it affected the political institutions of the Middle Ages, and through them of the whole civilized world. Most of the attributes of modem royalty, to take the most obvious instance, belonged originally and properly to the Emperor, and were borrowed from him by other monarchs. The once famous doctrine of divine right had the same origin. To the existence of the Empire is chiefly to be ascribed the prevalence of Roman law through
424 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE,
Ch. XXI. Europe, and its practical importance in our own days. Infiumce ^^^ while in Southern France and Central Italy, where up^ the subject population greatly outnumbered their eon-
jurispru- querors, the old system would have in any case sur- dence. vived, it cannot be doubted that in Germany, as in England, a body of customary Teutonic law would have grown up, had it not been for the notion that since the German monarch was the legitimate suc- cessor of Justinian, the Corpus Juris must be binding on all his subjects. This strange idea was received with a faith so unhesitating that even the aristocraey, who naturally disliked a system which the Emperors and the cities favoured, could not but admit its va- lidity, and before the end of the Middle Ages Roman law prevailed through all Germany*. When it is con- sidered how great are the services which German writers have rendered and continue to render to the study of scientific jurisprudence, this result will ap- pear far from insignificant. But another of still wider import followed. When by the Peace of West- phalia a crowd of petty principalities were recognized as practically independent states, the need of a code to regulate their intercourse became pressing. That code Grotius and his successors formed out of what was then the private law of Germany, which thus became the foundation whereon the system of inter- national jurisprudence has been built up during the last two centuries. That system is, indeed, entirely a German creation, and could have arisen in no country
' Modified of course by the canon law, and not superseding the feudal law of land.
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 425
where the law of Rome had not been the fountain Ch-XXI. of legal ideas and the groundwork of positive codes. In Germany, too, was it first carried out in practice, and that with a success which is the best, some might say the only, title of the later Empire to the grateful remembrance of mankind. Under its pro- tecting shade small princedoms and free cities lived unmolested, beside states like Saxony and Bavaria; each member of the Germanic body feeling that ' the rights of the weakest of his brethren were also his own.
The most important chapter in the history of the influence of Empire is that which describes its relation to i\iQ*^Emyire
^ ^ ^ upon the
Church and the Papacy. Of the ecclesiastical, power hUtory of it was alternately the champion and the enemy. In ^ the ninth and tenth centuries the Emperors extended the dominion of Peter^s chair : in the tenth and eleventh they rescued it from an abyss of guilt and shame to be the instrument of their own downfall. The struggle which Gregory the Seventh began, although it was political rather than religious, awoke in the Teutonic nations a hostility to the pretensions of the Romish court. That struggle ended with the death of the last Hohenstaufen, in the victory of the priesthood, a victory whose abuse by the insolent and greedy pontiffs of the fourteenth and fifteenth cen- turies made it more ruinous than a defeat. The • anger which had long smouldered in the breasts of the northern nations of Europe burst out in the six- teenth with a violence which alarmed those whom it had hitherto defended, and made the Emperors
426 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE,
Ch. XXI. once more the allies of the Popedom, and the part- ners of its declining fortunes. But the nature of that alliance and of the hostility which had preceded Nature it must not be misunderstood. It is a natural, but %mtion ^^ ^^^ ^^®® ^ serious error to suppose, as modem at time writers often seem to do, that the pretensions of the Emperors Empire and the Popedom were mutually exclusive; and the that each claimed all the rights — spiritual and se- cular— of a universal monarch. So far was this from being the case, that we find mediaeval writers and statesmen, even Emperors and Popes themselves, expressly recognizing a divinely appointed duality of government— two potentates, each supreme in the sphere of his own activity, Peter in things eternal, CaBsar in things temporal. The relative position of the two does indeed in course of time undergo a signal alteration. In the days of Charles, the barbarous age of modern Europe, when men were and could not but be governed chiefly by physical force, the Emperor was practically, if not theoretically, the grander figure. Four centuries later, in the era of Pope Innocent the Third, when the power of ideas had grown stronger in the world, and was able to resist or to bend to its service the arms and the wealth of men, we see the balance inclined the other way. Spiritual au- > thority is conceived of as being of a nature so high and holy that it must inspire and guide the civil administration. But it is not proposed to supplant that administration nor to degrade its head : the great struggle* of the eleventh and two following centuries does not aim at the annihilation of one or other
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE, 427
power, but turns solely upon the character of their Ch. XXI. connexion. Hildebrand, the typical representative of the Popedom, requires the obedience of the Emperor on the ground of his own personal responsibility for the souls of their common subjects : he demands, not that the functions of government shall be committed to himself, but that they shall be exercised in con- formity with the will of God, whereof he is the exponent. The imperialist party had no means of meeting this argument, for they could not deny Papal infallibilityj they could therefore only protest that the Emperor, being also divinely appointed^ was directly answerable to God, and remind the Pope that his kingdom was not of this world. There wa^ in truth no way out of the difficulty, for it was caused by the attempt to sever things that admit of no severance, life in the soul and life in the world, life for the future and life in the present. What it is most pertinent to remark is that neither combatant pushed his theory to extremities, since he felt that his adversary's title rested on the same foundations as his own. The strife was keenest at the time when the whole world believed fervently in both powers; the alliance came when faith had forsaken the one and grown cold towards the other ; from the Reformation onwards Empire and Popedom fought no longer for supremacy, but for existence. One is fallen alrea&y, the other shakes with every blast.
Nor was that which may be called the inner life of the Empire less momentous in its influence upon the minds of men than were its outward dealings
428 THE HOLT ROMAN EMFIBlS,
Ch. XXI. with the Roman church upon her greatness and decline. In the Middle Ages, men conceived of the communion of the saints as the formal unity of an organized body of worshippers/ and found the con- crete realization of that conception in their universal religious state, which was in one aspect, the Church ; in another, the Empire. Into the meaning and worth of the conception, into the nature of the con- nexion which subsists or ought to subsist between the Church and the State, this is not the place to inquire. That the form which it took in the Middle Ages was imperfect and unprogressive was suffi- ciently proved by the event. But by it the Euro- pean peoples were saved from the isolation, and narrowness, and jealous exclusiveuess which had checked the growth of the earlier civilizations of the world, and which we see now lying like a weight upon the kingdoms of the East : by it they were brought into that mutual knowledge and co-operation which is the condition if it be not the source of all true culture and progress- For as by the Roman Empire of old the nations were firsi; forced to own a common sway, so by the Empire of the Middle Ages was preserved the feeling of a brotherhood of mankind^ a commonwealth of the whole world, whose sublime unity transcended every minor dis- tinction.
As despotic monarchs claiming the world for their realm, the Teutonic Emperors strove from the first against three principles, over all of which their fore- runners of the elder Rome had triumphed, — ^those
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE, 429
of Nation^itv. Aristocracvvj^d Popular Freedom. Ch. XXi. Their early struggles were against the first of these^ Principles and ended with its victory in the emancipation, one «^^'^*« ^?
'f ^ ^ the Empire.
after another, of England, France, Poland, Hungary, Denmark, Burgundy, and Italy. The second, in the form of feudalism, menaced even when seeming to embrace and"oBey them, and succeeded, after the Great Interregnum, in destroying their efiective- strength in Germany. AggresIkf^Tfcieritence turned^ the independent principalities thus formed out of the greater fiefs, into military monarchies^ resting neither on a rude loyalty, like feudal king- doms, nor on religious duty and tradition, like the Empire, but on physical force, more or less disguised by legal forms. That the hostility to the Empire of the third was accidental rather than necessary is seen by this, that the very same monarehs who strove to* crush the Lombard and Tuscan cities favoured the; growth of the free towns of Germany* Asserting the rights of the individual in the sphere of religion,, the Reformation weakened the Empire bv denying the necessity of external unity in matters spiritual :
-^ . llT I I I ■..■~...-- Ml I, |H< III I .nil II iiiii^ 1,1,— ,,||,HI|| MlV
the extension of the same principle to the secular world, whose fulness is still withheld from the Ger- mans, would have struck at the doctrine of imperial absolutism had it not found a nearer and deadlier foe in the actual tyranny of the princes. It is more than a coincidence, that as the proclamation of the liberty of thought had shaken it, so the liberty of action made by the revolutionary movement, whose beginning the world saw and understood
430 THE HOLY EOMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XXI. not in 1789, — whose end we see not yet, — should have indirectly become the cause which overthrew the Empire. Change Its fall in the midst of the great convulsion that
lu^fM ^ changed the fisuce of Europe marks an era in history, an era whose character the events of every year are further unfolding : an era of the destruction of old forms and systems and the building up of new. The last instance is the most memorable. Under our eyes, the work which Theodoric and Lewis the Second, Guido and Ardoin and the second Frederick essayed in vain, has been achieved by the steadfast will of the Italian people. The fairest province of the Empire, for which Pranconian and Swabian battled so long, is now a single monarchy under the Burgundian count, whom Sigismund created imperial vicar in Italy, and who wants only the possession of the capital to be able to call himself ^king of the Romans^ more truly than Greek or Frank or Austrian has done since Constantino forsook the Tiber for the Bosphorus. No longer the prey of the stranger, Italy may forget the past, and sym- pathize with the efforts after national unity of her ancient enemy: efforts that have obstacles all but insuperable to overcome, yet in days like these not to be called hopeless. On the new shapes that may emerge in this general reconstruction it would be idle to speculate. Yet one prediction may be ven- tured. No universal monarchy is likely to arise. More frequent intercourse, and the progress of thought, have done much to change the character
THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 431
of national distinctions, substituting for ignorant Ch. XXI. prejudice and hatred a genial sympathy and the sense of a common interest. They have not lessened their force. No one who reads the history of the last three hundred years, no one, above all, who studies attentively the career of Napoleon, can be- lieve it possible for any state, however great her energy and material resources, to repeat in modem Europe the pai-t of ancient Rome: to gather into one vast political body races whose national indivi- duality has grown more and more marked in each successive age. Nevertheless, it is in great measure Jlelatumsof due to Rome and to the Roman Empire of the ^^\^^^^ Middle Ages that the bonds of national union are tionulities on the whole both stronger and nobler than they ^^ '^'^^P^- were ever before. The latest historian of Rome, after summing up the results to the world of his hero's career, closes his treatise with these words : ^^ There was in the world as CsBsar found it the rich and noble heritage of past centuries, and an endless abundance of splendour and glory, but little soul, still less taste, and, least of all, joy in and through life. Truly it was an old world, and even Csesar^s genial patriotism could not make it young again. The blush of dawn returns not until the night have fully descended. Yet with him there came to the much-tormented races of the Mediter- ranean a tranquil evening after a sultry day; and when, after long historical night, the new day broke once more upon the peoples, and fresh nations in free self-guided movement began their course
432 THE HOLY BOM AN EMPIRE.
Ch. XXI. towards new and higher aims^ many were found among them in whom the seed of Caesar had sprung up, many who owed him, and who owe him still, their national individuality ^" If this be the glory of Julius, the first great founder of the Empire, so is it also the glory of Charles, the second founder, and of more than one amongst his Teutonic succes- sors. The work of the mediaeval Empire was self- destructive ; and it fostered, while seeming to oppose, the nationalities that were destined to replace it. It tamed the barbarous races of the North, and forced them within the pale of civilization.. It preserved the arts and literature of antiquity. In time^ of violence and oppression, it set before its subjects the duty of rational obedience to the authority whose watchwords were peace and religion. It kept alive, when national hatreds were most bitter, the notion of a great European Commonwealth. And by doing all this, it was in effect abolishing the need for a cen- tralizing and despotic power like itself : it was making man capable of using national independence aright : it was teaching them to rise to that conception of spon- taneous activity, and a freedom which is above law but not against it, to which national independence itself, if it is to be a blessing at all, must be only a means. Those who mark what has been the ten- dency of events since a.d. 1789, and who remember how many of the crimes and calamities of the past are still but half redressed, need not be surprised
^ Mommsen, Jtdmische Qeschichiej iii.
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 433
to see the so-called principle of nationalities advo- Oh. XXI. cated with honest devotion as the final and perfect form of political developement. But such undis- tinguishing advocacy is after all only the old error in a new shape. K all other history did not bid us beware the habit of taking the problems and the conditions of our own age for those of all time^ the warning which the Empire gives might alone be warning enough. From the days of Augustus down to those of Charles the Fifth the whole civil- ized world believed in its existence as a part of the eternal fitness of things, and Christian theologians were not behind heathen poets in declaring that when it perished the world would perish with it. Yet the Empire is gone, and the world remains, and hardly notes the change.
This is but a small part of what might be said Difficvltiea upon an almost inexhaustible theme : inexhaustible y^J^^^ not from its extent but from its profundity: not »m»*^»*« 0/ because there is so much to say, but because, pursue we it never so far, more will remain unexpressed, since incapable of expression. For that which it is at once most necessary and least possible to do, is to look at the Empire as a whole: a single insti- tution, in which centres the history of eighteen centuries — whose outer form is the same, while its essence and spirit are constantly changing. It is when we come to consider it in this light that the difficulties of so vast a subject are felt in all their force. Try to explain in words the theory and inner meaning of the Holy Empire, as it appeared to the
Ff
l34 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ch. XXI. saints and poets of the Middle Ages^ and that which we cannot but conceive of as noble and fertile in its life, sinks into a heap of barren and scarcely intelligible formulas. Who has been able to describe the Papacy? Those persons, if such there still be, who see in it nothing but a gigantic upas-tree of fraud and superstition, planted and reared by the enemy of mankind, are hardly further from entering into the mystery of its being than the complacent political phi- losopher, who explains in neat phrases the process of its growth, analyses it as a clever piece of mechanism, enumerates and measures the forces that moved it, and gives, in conclusion, a sort of tabular view of its results for good and for evil. So, too, is the Holy Empire above all description or explanation. Some- thing, yet still how little, we should know of it if we knew what were the thoughts of Julius Caesar when he laid the foundations on which Augustus built: of Charles, when he reared anew the stately pile : of Barbarossa and his grandson, when they strove to avert the' surely coming ruin. Something more succeeding generations will know, who will judge the Middle Ages more fairly than we, still living in the midst of a reaction against all that is medieeval, can hope to do, and to whom it will be given to see and understand new forms of politica' life, whose nature we cannot so much as conjecture. Seeing more than we do, they will also see some things less distinctly. The Empire which to us still looms large on the horizon of the past, will to them sink lower and lower as they journey onwards into
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 435
the future. But its importance in universal history Ch. XXI. it can never lose. For into it all the life of the ancient world was gathered: out of it all the life of the modern world arose.
THE END.
Til
APPENDIX.
NOTE A. On the Burgundies.
It would be hard to mention any geographical name which, by its application at different times to different districts, has caused, and continues to cause, more con- fusion than this name Burgundy. There may, therefore, be some use in a brief statement of the more important of those applications. Without going into the minutiae of the subject, the following may be given as the ten senses in which the name is most frequently to be met with : — / I. The kingdom of the Burgundians (regnv/m Bv/rgun- diorvwrn), founded a.d. 406, occupying the whole valley of the Saone and lower 'KEone, from Dijon to the Mediter- ranean, and including also the Western half of Switzerland. It was destroyed by the sons of Clovis in a.d. 534.
II. The kingdom of Burgundy {regnum Bv/rgundice), mentioned occasionally under the Merovingian kings as a separate principality, confined within boundaries apparently somewhat narrower than those of the older kingdom last named.
/III. The kingdom of Provence or Burgundy (regnum ProvindcB seu Burgundies) — also, though less accurately, called the kingdom of Cis-Jurane Burgundy — was founded
438 APPENDIX.
by Boso in A. D. 877, and included Provence, Dauphin6, the Southern part of Savoy, and the country between the Saone and the Jura.
IV. The kingdom of Trans-Jurane Burgundy (regnuvi lureTise, Bia/rgvmdia Trcmaiv/rensis), founded by Budolf in A.D. 888, recognized in the same year by the Emperor Arnulf, included the Northern part of Savoy, and all Switzerland between the Beuss and the Jura.
V. The kingdom of Burgimdy or Aries (rtgnwrn, Bwr- gundicBy regnum Arelatense), formed by the union, under Conrad the Pacific, in a.d. 937, of the kingdoms described above as III and IV. On the death, in 1032, of the last independent king, Budolf III, it came partly by bequest, partly by conquest, into the hands of the Emperor Conrad II (the Salic), and thenceforward formed a part of the Em- pire. In the thirteenth century, France began to absorb it, bit by bit, and has now (since the annexation of Savoy in 1 861) acquired all except the Swiss portion of it.
VI. The Lesser Duchy (Burgundia Mmor), (Kleiu Burgund), corresponded very nearly with what is now Switzerland west of the Beuss, including the Valais. It was Trans-Jurane Burgundy (IV) mirms the parts of Savoy' which had belonged to that kingdom. It disap- pears from history after the extinction of the house of Z&hringen in the thirteenth century. Legally it was part of the Empire till a.d. 1648, though practically inde- pendent long before that date.
VII. The Free County or Palatinate of Burgundy (Franche Comt6), (Freigrafschaft), (called also Upper Burgundy), to which the name of Cis-Jurane Burgundy originally and properly belonged, lay between the Saone and the Jura. It formed a part of III and V, and was therefore a fief of the Empire. The French dukes of Burgundy were
APPENDIX. 439
invested with it in a.d. 1384^ and in 1678 it was annexed to the crown of France.
YIII. The Landgraviate of Burgandy (Landgrafschafb) was in Western Switzerland, on both sides of the Aar, be- tween Thun and Solothum. It was a part of the Lesser Duchy (VI), and, like it^ is hardly mentioned after the thirteenth century.
IX. The Circle of Burgundy (Kreis Burgund), an ad- ministrative division of the Empire, was established by Charles Y in 1 548 ; and included the Free County of Burgundy (VII) and the seventeen provinces of the Nether- lands, which Charles inherited from his grandmother Mary, daughter of Charles the Bold.
X. The Duchy of Burgundy (Lower Burgundy), (Bour- gogne), the most northerly part of the old kingdom of the Burgundians, was always a fief of the crown of France, and a province of France till the Eevolution. It was of this Burgundy that Philip the Good and Charles the Bold were Dukes. They were also Counts of the Free County (VII).
The most copious and accurate information regarding the obscure history of the Burgundian kingdoms (III, IV, and V) is to be found in the contributions of Baron Frederic de Gingins la Sarraz, a Vaudois historian, to the Archiv fur Schweiaer Geschichte. See also an adnurable article in the NcUixmcbl Review for October 1 860, entitled " The Franks and the Gauls."
440 APPENDIX.
NOTE B.
On the Eelations to the Empire of the Kingdom OF Denmabk, and the Duchies of Sohleswig and Holstein.
The history of the relations of Denmark and the Duchies to the Eomano-Germanic Empire is a very small part of the great Schleswig-Holstein controversy. But having been unnecessarily mixed up with two questions properly quite distinct, — ^the first, as to the relation of Schleswig to Holstein, and of both jointly to the Danish crown; the second, as to the diplomatic engagements which the Danish kings have in recent times contracted with the Gkrman powers, — it has borne its part in making the whole question the most intricate and interminable that has vexed Europe for two centuries and a half. Setting aside irrelevant matter, the facts as to the Empire are as follows : —
I. The Danish kings began to own the supremacy of the Frankish Emperors early in the ninth century. Having recovered their independence in the confusion that followed the fall of the Carolingian dynasty, they were again sub- dued by Henry the Fowler and Otto the Great, and con- tinued tolerably submissive till the death of Frederick II and the period of anarchy which followed. Since that time Denmark has been always independent, although her king was, until the treaty of a.d. 1865, a member of the German Confederation for Holstein.
II. Schleswig was in Carolingian times Danish ; the Eyder being, as Eginhard tells us, the boundary between Saxonia Transalbiana (Holstein), and the Terra Nortman- norum (wherein lay the town Sliesthorp), inhabited by the
APPENDIX. 441
ScandiDavian heathen. Otto the Great conquered all Schleswig, and, it is said, Jutland also, and added the southern part of Schleswig to the immediate territory of the Empire, erecting it into a margraviate. So it re- mained till the days of Conrad II, who made the Eyder again the boundary, retaining of course his suzerainty over the kingdom of Denmark as a whole. But by this time the colonization of Schleswig by the Germans had begun ; and ever since the numbers of the Danish population seem to have steadily declined, and the mass of the people to have grown more and more disposed to sympathize with their southern rather than their northern neighbours.
III. Holstein always was an integral part of the Empire^ as it is at this day of the German Bund.
442 APPENDIX.
NOTE C. On oebtaik Imperial Titles and Ceremonies.
This subject is a great deal too wide and too intricate to be more than touched upon here. But a few brief statements may have their use; for the practices of the Germanic Emperors have varied so greatly from time to time, that the reader becomes hopelessly perplexed without some clue. And if there were space to explain the causes of each change of title, it would be seen that the subject, dry as it may appear, is very far from being a barren or a dull one.
I. Titles of Emperors.
Charles the Great styled himself '^ Carolus serenissimus Augustus, a Deo coronatus, magnus et pacificus imperator, Romanum (or Eomanorum) gubemans imperium, qui et per misericordiam Dei rex Francorum et Laogobardorum."
Subsequent Carolingian Emperors were usually entitled simply "Imperator Augustus." Sometimes "rex Fran- corum et Langobardorum" was added*.
Conrad I and Henry I (the Fowler) were only German kings.
A Saxon Emperor was, before his coronation at Eome, " rex," or " rex Francorum Orientalium," or " Francorum atque Saxonum rex ;" after it, simply " Imperator Augus- tus." Otto ni is usually said to have introduced the form " Bomanorum Imperator Augustus," but some authorities state that it occurs in documents of the time of Lewis I.
> Waitz {DeuUche Verfass- be found in the times of the ungsgeschdchte) says that the Carolingians, but not in official phrase 'semper Augustus' may documents.
APPENDIX. 443
Henry II and his successors, not daring to take the title of Emperor till crowned at Eome (in conformity with the superstitious notion which had begun with Charles the Bald), but anxious to claim the sovereignty of Rome, as indissolubly attached to the German crown, began to call themselves '' reges Eomanorum." The title did not, how- ever, become common or regular till the time of Henry IV, in whose proclamations it occurs constantly.
From the eleventh century till the sixteenth, the inva- riable practice was for the monarch to be called " Roma- norum rex semper Augustus," till his coronation at Rome by the Pope ; after it, " Romanorum Imperator semper Augustus."
In A.D. 1508, Maximilian I, being refused a passage to Rome by the Venetians, obtained a bull from Pope Julius II permitting him to call himself "Imperator electus" (erwahlter Kaiser). Thia title Ferdinand I (brother of Charles V) and all succeeding Emperors took immediately upon their German coronation,, and it was till a.d. 1806 their strict legal designation^. But in practice the term "elect" was dropped*
Maximilian added the title " Germanise rex," which had never been known before, although the phrase " rex Ger- manorum" may be found employed once or twice in early times. " Rex Teutonicorum," " regnum Teutonicumc,'' occur often in the tenth and eleventh centuries. A great many titles of less consequence were added from time to
b There is some reason to think have been intende d to distin-
that towards the end of the Em- guish the kingdom of the East-
pire people had begun to fancy em or Germanic Franks from
that "erwahlter" did not mean that of the Western or Galli-
" elect," but *' elective." Cf . cized Franks (Francigense), which
note ", p. 400. grew at last into the * regnum
« These expressions seem to Francise.'
444 APPENDIX.
time. Charles the Fifth had seventy-five, not, of course, as Emperor, but in virtue of his vast hereditary pos- sessions <^.
It is perhaps worth remarking that the word Emperor has not at all the same meaning now that it had even so lately as two centuries ago. It is now a commonplace, not to say vulgar, title, somewhat more pompous than that of King, and supposed to belong especially to despots. It is given to all sorts of barbarous princes, like those of China and Abyssinia, in default of a better name. It is peculiarly affected by new dynasties ; and has indeed grown so fashionable, that what with Emperors of Brazil, of Hayti, and of Mexico, the good old title of King seems in a fair way to become obsolete «. But in former times there was, and could be but one Emperor ; he was always mentioned with a certain reverence : his name summoned up a host of thoughts and associations, which we cannot comprehend or sympathize with. His office, unlike that of modem Emperors, was by its very nature elective, and not hereditary; and, so far from resting on conquest or the will of the people, rested on and represented pure legality. War could give him nothing which law had not given him already : the people could ' delegate no power to him who was their lord and the viceroy of God.
^ It is right to remark that forgeries and anachronisms, De- what is stated here can be taken tailed information may be found as only generally and probably in Pfeffinger, Moser, and Putter, true : so great are the discrepan- and in the host of writers to cies among even the most careful whom they refer, writers on the subject, and so « We in England may be thought numerous the forgeries of a later to have made some slight move- age, which are to be found among ment in the same direction by the genuine documents of the calling the united great council early Empire. Goldast's Collec- of the Three Kingdoms the Im- tioni, for instance, are fiiU of perial Parliament.
AFFEFDIX, 445
II. The Crowns.
Of the four crowns something has been said in the text. They were those of Germany, taken at Aachen ; of Bur- gundy, at Aries ; of Italy, sometimes at Pavia, more usually at Milan or Monza ; of the world, at Rome.
The German crown was taken by every Emperor aftier the time of Otto the Great ; that of Italy by every one, or almost every one, who took the Roman down to Frederick III, by none after him ; that of Burgundy, it would appear, by four Emperors only, Conrad II, Henry III, Frederick I, and Charles IV. The imperial crown was received at Rome by most Emperors till Frederick III; after him by none save Charles V, who obtained both it and the Italian at Bologna in a somewhat informal manner. But down to a.d. 1806, every Emperor bound himself by his capitulation to proceed to Rome to receive it.
It should be remembered that none of these inferior crowns was necessarily connected with that of the Roman Empire, which might have been held by a simple knight without a foot of land in the world. For as there hiad bqen Emperors (Lothar I, Lewis II, Lewis of Provence (son of Boso), Guy, Lambert, and Berengar) who were not kings of Germany, so there were several (all those who preceded Conrad II) who were not kings of Burgundy, and others (Amulf, for example) who were not kings of Italy. And it is also worth remarking, that although no crown save the German was assumed by the successors of Charles V, their rights remained in fall force, and were never subsequently relinquished. There was nothing, except the practical difficulty and absurdity of such a project, to prevent Francis II from having himself crowned at Aries, Milan, and Rome.
446 APPENDIX,
III. The King of the Homaks (EIomischer Eonig).
It has been shewn above how and why, about the time of Henry II, the German monarch began to entitle him- self " Romanorum rex." Now it was not uncommon in the Middle Ages for the heir-apparent to a throne to be crowned during his father's lifetime, that at the death of the latter he might step at once into his place. (Coro- nation^ it must' be remembered, which is now merely a spectacle, was in those days not only a sort of sacrament, but a matter of great political importance.) This plan was specially useful in an elective monarchy, such as Ger- many was after the twelfth century, for it avoided the delays and dangers of an election while the throne was vacant. But as it seemed against the order of nature to have two Emperors at once ^, and as the sovereign's autho- rity in Germany did not depend upon the Roman but on the German coronation, the practice came to be that each Emperor during his own life procured, if he could, the election of his successor, who was crowned at Aachen, in later times at Frankfort, and took the title of " King of the Romans." During the presence of the Emperpr in Germany he exercised no more authority than a Prince of Wales does in England, but on the Emperor's death he succeeded at once, without any second election or coro- nation, and assumed (after the time of Ferdinand I) the
' Nevertheless, Otto II was lifetime of Charles. Many ana- crowned Emperor, and reigned logies.to the practice of the Ro- for some time along with his mano-Germanic Empire in this father, under the title of "Co- respect might he adduced from Imperator." So Lothar I was the history of the old Roman, associated in the Empire with as well as of the Byzantine Lewis the Pious, as Lewis him- Empire, self had been crowned in the
APPENDIX, 447
title of " Emperor Elect «." Before Ferdinand's time, he would have been expected to go to Rome to be crowned there. While the Hapsburgs held the sceptre, each monarch generally contrived in this way to have his son or some other near relation chosen to succeed him. But many were foiled in their attempts to do so ; and, in such cases, an election was held after the Emperor's death, according to the rules laid down in the Golden Bull.
The first person who thus became king of the Romans in the lifetime of an Emperor was Henry, son of Fre- derick II.
It was in imitation of this title that Napoleon called his son king of Home.
s Maximilian had obtained this right, and his successors followed title, " Emperor Elect/' from the the example. Pope. Ferdinand took it as of
448 APPENDIX.
NOTE D. Lines contrasting the Past and Present of Rome.
DuM simulacra mihi, dum numina vana placebant,
Militia, populo, moenibus alta fiii : At simul effigies arasque superstitiosas
Deiiciens, uni sum famulata Deo, Cesserunt areas, cecidere palatia diviim,
Servivit populus, degeneravit eques. Yix scio quse fiierim, yix Bomse Roma recordor ;
Vix sinit occasus vel meminere mei. Gratior hsec iactura mihi successibus illis ;
Maior sum pauper divite, staute iacens : Plus aquilis vexilla crucis, plus Csesare Petrus,
Plus cinctis ducibus vulgus inerme dedit. Stans domui terras, iufemum diruta pulso,
Corpora staus, animas fiacta iacensque rego. Tunc miserae plebi, modo principibus tenebrarum
Impero : tunc urbes, nunc mea regna polus.
Written by Hildebert, bishop of Caen, and afterwards archbishop of Tours (born a.d. 1057). Extracted from his works as printed by Migne, Patrologice Cursv/s Conv-
*» See note ^, p. 299.
INDEX.
A.
Aachen, 72, 79, 86, 213, 350 note, 445.
Adalbebt (St.), 297 ; the church founded at Borne to receiye his ashes, 317.
Adelheid (Queen of Italy), account of her adventures, 91.
Adolf of Nassau, 243, 244, 289.
AiSTULF the Lombard, 43.
Alabic, his desire to preserve the institutions of the Empire, 19.
Albebic (consul or senator), 91.
Albert I (son of Budolf of Haps- burg), 243, 246, 289.
Aibigenses, revolt of the, 265.
Alcuin of York, 65, 73, 104, 221.
Alexander III (Pope), Frederick I's contest with, 188 j their meeting at Venice, 189.
Alfonso of Castile, his double election with Bichard of Eng- land, 233, 252.
America, discovery of, 344.
Ajtastabius, his account of the coronation of Charles, 61.
AlNGELo (Michael), .rebuilding of the Capitol by, 326.
Antichrist, views respecting, in the earlier Middle Ages, 123 note j in later times, 368.
Architecture, Boman, 53, 320 ; ana- logy between it and the civil and ecclesiastical constitution,
826 ; preservation of an antique
character in both, 327. Abdoin (Marquis of Ivrea), 163. Aristocracy, barbarism of the, in
the Middle Ages, 319 ; struggles
of the Teutonic Emperors against
the, 429. Aries ; see Burgundy. Abnold of Brescia, Bome under,
193, 278, 305 ; put to death at
the instance of Pope Hadrian,
307 ; 331 note. Abnulf (Emperor), 86. Athanaric, 18.
Athanasius, the triumph of, 13. Athaulf the Visigoth, his thoughts
and purposes respecting the Bo- man Empire, 20, 32. Augsburg, 286 ; treaty of, 369. AuUc Council, the, 375, 378 note. Austria, privilege of, 219 ; her
claim to represent the Boman
Empire, 406, 421. Austrian succession, war of the, • 388. Avignon, exactions of the court
of, 241 ; its subservience to
France, 241, 268.
• B.
Barbarians, the Boman Empire before and at the time of their invasion, 5, 15 ; Boman armies largely composed of, 16; ad<
ag
450
INDEX.
mitted to Roman titles and honours^ 16 ; their feelings to- wards the Roman Empire, 18 ; their desire to preserve its in- stitutions, 19; value of the Roman officials and Christian bishops to the, 21 ; their belief in the eternity of the Empire, 22.
Bartolommeo (San), the church of, 317.
Basil the Macedonian and Lewis II, 211.
'Basileus,' the name of, 211.
Belisabius, his war with the Ostrogoths, 801.
Bell-tower, or campanile, in the churches of Rome, 325.
Benedict of Soracte, 57 note.
Benedict VII T (Pope), alleged decree of, 216, 217.
Benevento, the Annals of, 164.
Bebengar of Friuli, 89 ; his death, 91.
Bible, rights of the Empire proved from the, 121 ; perversion of its meaning, 124, 125.
Bohemia acquired by Luxemburg A. D. 1309, 244 ; the king of an elector, 253.
BbNiPACE "VIII (Pope), his ex- travagant pretensions, 118,272 ; declares himself Vicar of the Empire, 241 note.
Boso, accession of, 89, 438.
Bosphorus, removal of the seat of government to the, 169.
Buildings, the old, destruction and alteration of, by invaders, 322 ; by the Romans of the Middle Ages, 323 ; by modem restorers of churches, 323.
Bull, the Golden, of Charles IV, 248, 260.
Burgundy, the kingdom of, Otto*s policy towards, 156; added to the Empire under Conrad IT, 165 ; effect of its loss on the Em- pire, 338 ; confusion caused by
the name^ 437; ten senses in which it is met with, 437-9. Byzantium, effect of the reinoval of the seat of power to, 9; Otto's policy towards, 164.
C.
Campanile ; see Bell-tower.
Canon law, correspondence be- tween it and the Corpus Juris Civilis, 110 ; its consolidation by Gregory IX, 110, 238.
Capitol, rebuilding of the, by Michael Angelo, 326.
Capitulary of a. d. 802, 72.
Caracalla (Emperor), effect of his edict, 6.
Carolingian Emperors, 84.
Carolingian Empire of the West, its end in a.d. 888, 86; Florus the Deacon's lament over its dissolution, 92 note.
Carroccio, the, 197 note, 318.
Cathari and other heretics, spread of, 266.
Catholicity or Romanism, 101,115.
Celibacy, enforcement of 1 74.
Charlemagne ; see Charles I.
CharlesI (the Great), extinguishes the Lombard kingdom, 45 ; is received with honours by Pope Hadrian and the people, 46; his ])ersonal ambition, 46; title of ' Champion of the Faith and Defender of the Holy See' conferred upon, 52 ; crowned at Rome, 52; important con- sequences of his coronation, 55, 57, 88; errors respecting it, 57 ; contemporary accounts^ 69, 60, 61, 92; their uniformity, 62 ; illegnjity of the transaction described by them, 62; three theories respecting it held four centuries after, 63 ; was the coronation a surprise ? 64 ; the Empire long the goal of the Frankish kmgs, 65; his leluc-
INDEX,
451
tance to assume the imperial title, 67; solution suggested by Bollinger, 67; seeks the band of Irene, 68 ; failure of the pro- ject, 68 ; importance attached by him to th& imperial title, 68, 72; its influence in Germany and Gaul, 7^ ; • his government as Emperor, 70; his authority in matters ecclesiastical, 71; presses Hadrian to declare Con- stantine YI a heretic, 71 ; his reasons, 71 ; lectures Pope Leo, 71 ; title of " Episcopus episco- porum" applied to, 72 ; his spi- ritual despotism applauded by subsequent Popes, 72 ; chooses to be called by the name of David, 73 ; and to exercise the powers of the Jewish king, 74 ; draws closer the connexion of Church and State, 74; tithes first enforced by, 74 ; acquires the headship of the world in civil affairs, 75 ; his action on Europe, 76; traditions which guided his efforts, 76 ; his wars as much ot the cross as the sword, 76 ; his position as Prank- ish king, 77 ; general resul^ of his empire, 78; his attempt to breathe Teutonic spirit into Ro- man forms, 78 ; its failure, 78 ; his personal habits and sympa- thies, 79 ; groundlessness of the claims of the modem Prench to, 79 ; his empire and character generally, 80, 81 ; secret of his power, 81 ; comparison between him and Ceesar and Napoleon, 82 ; impress of his mind on me- diaeval society, 82; buried at Aachen, 82 ; inscription on his tomb, 82 ; canonised as a saint, 83 ; troubles of his Empire after his death, 84 ; his wishes re- specting it, 84; comparison be- tween his Empire and that of Otto, 167 ; 303.
Charles II (the Bald),. 86, 171, 172.
Chablbs III (the Pat), 86, 89.
Charles IV, 246; his electoral constitution, 247 ; his Golden Bull, 248, 260 ; general results of his policy, 259 ; his object through life, 260 ; the University of Prague founded by, 260 ; wel- comed into Italy by Petrarch, 281.
Charles V, accession of, 863 ; casts in his lot with the Catho- lics, 355; the momentous re- sults, 356 ; failure of his repres- sive policy, 356.
Charles VI (the last Hapsburg), 384, 388.
Charles VII, his disastrous reign, A.D. 1742-1746, 388.
Charles VIII (King of France), his pretensions on Naples and Milan, 349.
Charles Martel, 42, 43.
Charles of Valois, 246.
Charles the Bold and Frederick III, 276.
Chemnitz, his comments on the condition and prospects of the Empire, 374.
Childeric, his deposition by the Holy See, 43.
Chivalry, the orders of, 276.
Christianity, causes of the spread of, 10 ; opposed by the Emperors as disloyal and revolutionary, 10 ; its alliance with the State, 11.
Church, the Emperor the head of the. 1 2 ; growth of her strength, 12, 24 ; proofs of her power, 13; attachment of the people to the, 13 ; embraces and preserves the imperial idea, 13 ; preservation of her unity, 101 ; Otto's posi- tion towards the, 140 ; effect of the Eeformation on the doctrines regarding the, 361 ; the Holy Empire but another name for the,
2
452
INDEX.
862 ; £Mciiiationofthe idea of the, in the Middle Ages, 408 ; pro- found change in the feeHngs of the present age, 409 ; influence of the Empire upon the history of the, 425.
Church and State, 74, 116, 428.
Churches, national, 103, 364.
Churches of Rome, destruction of old huildings by modem restor- ers of, 323 ; mosaics and bell- tower in the, 325.
CivQ law, revival of the study of, 190 ; its study forbidden by the Popes in the thirteenth century, 279.
CiYius, the Batavian, 19.
Clergy, aversion of the Lombards to the, 40 ; their idea of political unity, 104 ; their power in the eleventh century, 140 ; Gregory VII's condemnation of feud^ investitures to the, 174; their ambition and corruption in the later Middle Age, 320.
Clovi8, his desire to preserve the institutions of the Empire, 19, 32 ; his unbroken success, 38.
Coins, papal, 307 note.
CoLONNA (John), Petrarch's letters to, 298 and note ; the family of, 311.
Commons, the, 143, 848.
Concordat of Worms, a.d. 1122, 179.
Confederation of the Bhine, pro- visions of the, 400.
CoNBAD I (Eingof the East Franks), 132, 249.
CoNBAD II, the reign of, 165 ; comparison between the prero- gative at his accession and that at the death of Henry V, 181 ; the crown of Burgundy first gained by, 213.
CoNBAD III, 182, 306.
CONBAD IV, 233.
CONBADIN (Frederick II's grand- son), murder of, 231.
Constance, the Council of, 241, 242, 280, 333 ; the peace of, signed by Frederick 1, 197.
CoKSTANTiNE, his vigorous policy, 9 ; the Donation of, 47, 108, 318 note.
Constantinople, 209 ; capture of, 335, 345.
Coronations, the four, gone through by the Emperors, 213, 445 ; their meaning, 214 ; churches in which they were pCTformed, 314, 318, 319.
Corpus Juris Civilis, correspond- ence between it and the Canon Law, 110.
Counts Palatine, Otto's institution of, 136.
Crowns, the four, 213, 445.
Crusades, the, 180, 183, 198, 212, 225, 229.
D.
Dante, 229 ; his attitude towards the Empire, 282 ; his treatise Be Monarchiaj 289, 291 ; sketch of its argument, 291 et seq. ; its omissions, 296 ; 330.
Dark Ages, existing relics of the, 324.
Decretals, the False, 172.
Denmark and the Slaves, 156 ; imperial authority in, 203 ; its relations to the Empire, 440.
Diet, the, 136, 137, 347, 348, 384, 390 ; its rights as settled a., d. 1648, 375 ; its altered character A.D.1654,380; its triflings, 390.
Diocletian, his vigorous policy, 8.
Divine right of the Emperor, 272.
Dominicans, the order of, 225.
Donation of Constantine, forgery of the, 47, 48, 108, 109, 128 note, 288 note.
Dukes, the, in Germany, 135.
E.
East, imperial pi^etensions in the, 208.
INDEX.
453
East and West, reunion of the, 29.
Eastern Church, the, 210.
Eastern Empire, its relations with the Western, 70, 210.
Edict of Caracalla, 6.
Edward TI (King of England) his declaration of England's in- dependence of the Empire, 206.
Edward III (King of England) and Lewis the Bavarian, 206 ; his election against Charles IV^, 245.
Eginhard, his statement respect- ing Charleses coronation, 64.
Elective constitution, the, 250 ; difficulty of maintaining the principle in practice, 256 ; its objects the choice of the fittest man, 256 ; restraint of the sove- reign, 257 ; recognition of the popular will, 257.
Elector, the prince of Hessen- Cassel the only potentate now so entitled, 255 ; advantage of the title, 255 note ; personages upon whom it was conferred by Napoleon, 255.
Electoral body in primitive times, 249.
Electoral function, conception of the, 259.
Electorate, the Eighth, 255 ; the Ninth, 256.
Electors, the Seven, 182,252 ; their names and offices, 254 note ; the question of their vote, 284 note.
Emperor, his position and policy in the second century, 5, 6 ; the headoftheChurch,12,120; sanc- tity of the name, 24, 130 ; impor- tance attached to it by the Em- peror Charles, 72 ; parallel be- tween his position and functions and those of thePope,112 et seq. ; harmony of their powers, 116 ; proofs firom medisBval docu- ments, 118 ; and from the coro- nation ceremonieg, 121 ; illus-
trations from mediaeval art, 126 ; nature of his power, 131 ; his dignities and titles, 212, 284, 288, 442 ; the title not assumed till the Boman coronation, 215 ; origin and results of this prac- tice, 216 ; his office as peace- maker, 270, 271 ; divine right of the, 272 ; his right of creating kings, 275 ; his international place at the Council of Con- stance, 280 ; his rights as settled A. D. 1648, 375 ; cdtercd meaning of the word now-a-days, 444.
Emperor of the West, title and office extinguished by Odoacer^ A. D. 476, 27.
"Emperor Elect," title of, 350, 447.
Emperors, meaning of their four coronations, 213, 214, 445 ; per- sons eligible as, 277 ; their posi- tion in Italy, 290 note ; after Henry VII, 291 ; their visits to Home, 312 ; their approach, 313 ; their entrance, 314 ; hostility of the Pope and people to the, 314 ; their burial-places, 317 note ; nature of the question at issue between the Popes and the, 426 ; their titles, 442.
Emperors, Carolingian, 84.
Emperors, Franconian, 145.
Emperors, Hapsburg, their claims, 337 ; their policy, 384, 385.
Emperors, Italian, 88.
Emperors, Saxon, 145.
Emperors, Swabian or Hohen- staufen, 63, 182, 184.
Emperors, Teutonic, defects in their title, 68 ; their short- sighted policy, 306 ; their me- morials in Rome, 316 ; names of those buried in Italy, 317 note ; their struggles against nationality, aristocracy, and po- pular freedom, 429.
Empire, the "Translation" of the, 58, 120, 194, 239.
454
INDEX,
Empire and Papacy, interdepend- ence of, 110 ; its consequences, 110, 111 ; struggle between them, 168 ; their relations, 170.
Empire, Western, last days of the, 26 ; its extinction by Odoacer, A.D. 476, 28; its restoration, 37.
Empire-Church of the Middle Ages, 117, 366.
Empire, French, under Napoleon, 397.
Engknd, 35, 49 ; Otto's position towards, 15Y ; authority not exercised by any Emperors in, 205 ; vague notion that it must depend on the Empire, 205 ; imperial pretensions towards, 206, 207 ; position of the regal power in, as compared with Grermany, 236; feudalism in, 379.
Europe, bearing of the Empire on the progress of, 423 ; on the nationalities of, 431.
F.
False Decretals, the, 172.
Ferdinand I, 350 note, 443.
Ferdinand II, accession of, 370 ; his plans, 370 ; deprives the Palsgrave Frederick of his elec- toral vote, 254.
Feudal aristocracy, power of the, 243.
Feudal king, his peculiar relation to his tenants, 135.
Feudalism, 98, 133 ; reason of its firm grasp upon society, 134 et seq. ; hostility between it and imperialism, 143 ; its results in France, 379 ; in England, 379 : in Grermany, 380 ; struggles of the Teutonic Emperors against, 429.
Financial distress of the Empire, 246.
Florus the Deacon's lament over
the dissolution of the Carolin- gian Empire, 92 note.
Fontenay, battle of, 85.
France, imperial authority exer- cised in, 204 ; her irritation at Germany's precedence, 204 ; growth of the regal power in, as compared with Germany, 235; alliance of the Protestants with, 858 ; feudalism in, 379 ; under Napoleon, 397 ; her claim to represent the itoman Empire, 406, 415.
Francis I, reign of, 1745-1765, 388.
Francis II, accession of, 393 ; his abdication, 400 ; its effect, 1.
Fnmciscans, the order of, 225.
Franconia, extinction of the duke- dom of, 244.
Franconian Emperors, 145.
*' Frank," sense in which the name was used, 156 note.
Franks, rise of the, 37 ; success of their arms, 38 ; their greatness chiefly due to the clergy, 39.
Franks, the West, Otto's policy towards, 155.
Frankfort, coronations at, 350 note, 446.
Frederick I (Barbarossa), his brilliant reign, 184, 198 ; his relations to the Popedom, 184 ; his contest with Pope Hadrian IV, 186, 316 ; incident at their meeting on the way to Rome, 314 note ; his contest with Pope Alexander III, 188 ; their meet- ing at Venice, 189 ; magnificent ascriptions of dignity to, 191 ; assertion of his prerogative in Italy, 192 ; his version of the "Translation of the Empire," 194 ; his dealings with the rebels of Milan and Tortona, 194; his temporary success, 196 ; victory of the Lombards over, 197 ; his prosperity as German king, 197 ; bis glorious life and happy death.
INDEX,
455
198 ; legend respectiDg him, 200 ; extent of his jurisdiction, 202 ; his dominion in the East, 208 ; his letter to Saladin, 208 \ anoec- dote of, 214.
Erbobrick II, character of, 228 ; events of his struggle with the Papacy, 229 ; results of his reign, 243 ; the charge of heresy against, 277 note; memorials left by, in Eome, 318.
Fbedbick III abases himself be- fore the Bomish court, 242; Charles the Bold seeks an ar- rangement with, 275 ; his cala- mitous reign, 333.
Frederick (Count Palatine and King of Bohemia), deprived by Ferdinand II of his electoral vote, A. D. 1618, 254 ; reinstated at the peace of Westphalia, 255.
Frederick of Prussia (the Great), 384, 389, 390 note.
Freedom, popular growth of, A. D. 1100-1400, 265 ; struggles of the Teutonic Emperors against, 429.
G.
Gallic race, political character of the, 416.
G«uverfassung, the so-called, 133.
Gerrert (Pope Sylvester II), 159, 160.
German cities, the, 198 ; Frede- rick's policy towards, 199.
" German Emperor," the title of, 188,351,443.
Grerman kingdom, the, 87; its history to the twelfth century, 137 ; union of the Boman Em- pire with, 132 ; dissimilarity of the two systems, 138 ; results of their union, 139 ; not origin- ally elective, 248.
German people, the, under Otto, 143, 158 ; their feelings at the close of the eighteenth centnry, 391.
German Union of Princes formed by Frederick of Prussia, 391.
Germanic constitution, the, 243 ; influence upon, of the theory of the Empire as an international power, 340 ; attempted reforms of, 347 ; means by which it was proposed to effect them, 348 ; causes of their £a.ilure, 348.
Germany and its monarchy, 132 ; its feudal polity, 136 ; changes produced in, by the anarchy of Henry IV*s reigD, 181 ; its go- vernment, 198 ; its frightful state during the Great Inter- regnum, 234 ; decline of imperial power in, 232 ; as compared with France and England, 286 ; causes of the change, 237 ; teni- torial sovereignty of its princes, 243 ; its throne purely elective, 251 ; its weakness as compared with other states of Europe, 334 ; its loss of imperial territories, 336 ; its internal weakness, 339 ; attitude of the Emperor in, com- pared with that of his prede- cessors in Europe, 342 ; begin- ning of the Hapsburg influence in, 343 ; its nationality, 349 ; destruction of its State-system, 357 ; its troubles, 369 ; after the Peace of Westphalia, 378 ; effect of a number of petty indepen- dent states upon, 378 ; feudalism in, 379 ; its political life in the eighteenth century, 380 ; foreign thrones acquired by its princes 382 ; French aggression upon 382; its weakness and stagna tion, 383 ; Napoleon in, 398 influence of the Holy Empire on, 418.
Gerson, chancellor of Paris, plans of, 333.
Ghibeline, the name of, 336 note, 337.
Golden Bull of Charles IV, 248, 260.
456
INDEX.
Greece, her influence in the fif- teenth and sixteenth centuries, 264, 278 ; her claim to repre- sent the Roman Empire, 407. Greeks and Latins, origin of their
separation, 41 note. Greeks, effect of their hostility upon the Teutonic Empire, 210. Gregobt the GrREAT, fame of his sanctity and writings, 34; means by which he advanced Rome's ecclesiastical authority, 169. Gregory TI (Pope), reason of his reluctance to break with the Byzantine princes, 110. Gregory III (Pope) appeals to Charles Martel for succour against the Lombards, 42. Gregory V (Pope), 160. Gregory VII (Pope), his con- demnation of feudal investitures to the clergy, 1 74 ; war between him and Henry IV, 174 ; his letter to William the Conqueror, 176 ; passage in hi3 second ex- communication of Henry, 177; results of the struggle between them, 178 ; his death, 179 ; his silence about the Translation of the Empire, 240 ; his simile be- tween the Empire and the Pope- dom, 412. Gregory IX (Pope), Canon law consolidated by, 110; receives the title of "Justinian of the Church," 110. Gregory X (Pope), 241. Grotius, 424.
Guelf, the name of, 836 note, 337. GuiDO, or Guy, of Spoleto,89, 446. GuiscARD, Robert, 822. GuNDOBALD the Burgundian, 27. Gunther of Schwartzburg, 244. GusTAVus Adolphus, 871.
H.
Hadrian I (Pope), motives of his
policy, 46 ; his schemes for ac- quiring territorial wealth, 47; his aUusion to Constantine's Donation, 128 note. Hadrian IV (Pope), Frederick Ps contest with, 186; proclaims the alleged decree of Benedict VIII, 217, 816. Hanseatic Confederacy, 245, 383. Hapsburg Emperors, beginning of their influence in Germany, 343 ; their policy, 337, 384, 385 ; re- peated attempts to set them aside, 386; causes of the long retention of the throne by the, 386 ; Pfeffinger's nine reasons, 388 note ; modern pretensions of, 406, 420. Hapsburg, the castle of, 234
note. Harold the Blue-toothed, 156. Henry I (the Fowler), 87, 132,
133, 144, 249. Henry II crowned Emperor a. D.
1014, 164. Henry II (King of France), as- sumes the title of " Protector of the German Liberties," 358. Henry II (King of England), his submissive tone towards Frede- rick I, 206. Henry III, power of the Empire at its meridian under, 166 ; his reform of the Popedom, 166 ; £»tal results of his encroach- ments, 167 ; his death, 167. Henry IV, election of, 249 note ; war between him and Gregory VII, 174 ; his humiliation, 175 ; results of the struggle, 178. Henry V (Emperor), his claims over ecclesiastics, 179 ; his quar- rel with Pope Paschal II, 179 ; his perilous position, 180 ; com- parison between the prerogative at his death and that at the accession of Conrad II, 181 ; tumults produced by his corona- tion, 315.
INDEX,
457
Henry V (King of England) re- fuses submission to the Emperor Sigismund, 206, 207. Henry VI, 208 ; his proposal to unite Naples and Sicily to the Empire, 226 ; opposition to the scheme, 226 ; his untimely death, 226, 251. Henry VII, 243, 245 ; in Italy,
289 ; his death, 291. Henry VIII (King" of England),
369 nofce. Hessen-Cassel, prince of, the only potentate now entitled Elector, 256. HiLDEBERT (Bishop of Caen), his lines contrasting the past and present of Rome, 448. HiLDEBRAND ; 866 Gregory VII. HiPPOLYTUS a Lapide, the treatise
of, 374. Hohenstaufen ; see Emperors, Swa-
bian. Hohenstaufen, the castle of, 182
note. Holland, its separation from the
Empire A. D. 1648, 377. Holstein, its relations to the Em- pire, 440. Holy Ghost, Procession of the,
93. Holy Boman Empire, date of its commencement, 3, 88, 219, 223 note ; consideration of the, 112 ; it and the Holy Roman Church one and the same, 115 ; its titles and pretensions, 201, 442 ; its limits, 202 ; the epithet * Holy * added by Frederick I, 219 ; origin and history of the epithet, 219-223 ; merged in the German Empire, 346, 351 ; its influence on Germany, 418 ; Austria as heir of the, 421 ; general influence on Europe of the, 423. (See Roman Empire.) Hugh Capet, 155, 156. Hugh of Burgundy, 91. Hungarians^ the, 156.
Hungary, imperial authority ex- ercised in. 202 ; its connexion with the Hapsburgs, 203 note.
Huss, the writings of, 265.
I.
Iconoclastic controversy, 42. Images, the worship of, 42. "Imperator electus," the title of,
350, 443. Imperial territories, extent of,
202 ; loss of, 377. Imperial titles and ceremonies,
212. 442. Innocent III (Pope), his exertions on behalf of Otto IV, 227; his pretensions, 238, 239 ; over- throws him, 240. ■ Innocent X and the sacred num- ber Seven of the electors, 250 note; his protest against the Peace of Westphalia, 376. International power, the need of an, 267 ; why the Roman Em- pire an, 274. Interregnum, the Great, 202; frightful state of Germany du- ring, 234; enables the feudal aristocracy to extend their power, 243. Investitures, the struggle of the,
305. Irene (Empress), behaviour of,
51, 52, 68. Italian Emperors, 88. Italian nationality, era at which its first rudiments appeared, 153. Italians, modem, their feelings
towards Rome, 330. Italy reconquered by Justinian, 32 ; harassed by the Lombards, 40 ; its condition a. d. 951, 88, 93 ; account of Otto the Great's first expedition into, 91 ; his • design for its recovery, 94; crowned king of, 96; Otto's rule in, 152; Frederick I in,
458
INDEX.
192 ; Henry VII in, 289 ; lost to the Empire, 232, 386 ; names of Emperors buried in, 317 note ; the nation at the present day, 430. Italy, Southern, 164.
J.
John VIII (Pope), 171 ; his de- thronement and death, 179.
John XII (Pope), crowns Otto the Great, 95; plots against him, 146, 147 ; his repro- bate life, 146 ; Liudprand's list of the charges against, 147; letter recounting them sent to him, 148 ; his reply, 148 ; Otto's answer, 149 ; deposed by Otto. 149 ; regret of the Ro- mans at his expulsion, 150 ; his return and death, 150.
John XXII (Pope), his conflict with Lewis IV, 241.
Joseph II, reign of, 1766-1790, 389.
Julius Cjesar, 7, 431, 434.
Julius II (Pope), 349.
Jurisprudence, influence of, in sup- porting the Empire, 34 ; aver- sion of the Romish court to the ancient, 279 ; influence of the Empire on modem, 424.
Jurists, their attitude towards im- perialism, 283.
Justinian, Italy reconquered by, 32 ; study of the legislation of, 264, 274, 283.
*' Justinian of the Church," title of, conferred on Gregory IX, 110.
Jutland, Otto penetrates into, 156.
K.
Kings, the Emperor's right of
creating, 275. •
Ejiighthood, analogy between priesthood and, 276.
L.
Lactantius, his belief in the eter- nity of the Boman Empire, 23.
Lakbebt (son of Guide of Spoleto), 89.
Landgrave of Thuringia, choice of the, commanded by the Pope, 241.
Lateran Palace at Rom^ mmuc of the, iUnrtntire of the rights of -the Empire, 126, 318.
Latins and Greeks, origin of their separation, 41 note.
Lauresheini, Annals of, their ac- count of the coronation of Charles, 59.
Law, influence exercised by the permanence of the old, 84 ; era of the revived study of Roman, 305.
Learning, revival of, A.D. 1100- 1400, 264 ; connexion between it and imperialism, 280.
Leo I (Pope), his assertion of universal jurisdiction, 169.
Leo the Isaubian (Emperor), his attempt to abolish the worship of images, 42.
Leo III (Pope), his accession a.d. 796, 48 ; his adventures, 48, 52 ; crowns Charles at Rome on Christmas Day, a. d. ^00, 53.
Leo Vni (Pope), 150.
Leonine city, the,' 316 note.
Leopold I, ninth electorate con- ferred by, 255.
Leopold II, 1790-1792, 889.
Lewis I (the Pious), 84, 85.
Lewis II and Basil the Macedo- nian, 211, 445.
Lewis III (son of Boso), 89.
Lewis IV, his conflict with Pope John XXII, 241 ; appoints Ed- ward III his vicar, 206, 243.
Lewis XII (King of France), his pretensions on Naples and Mi- lan, 349.
INDEX.
459
Lewis XIV (King of France), 382.
Lewis (the German), (son of Louis the Pious), 85.
Lewis the Child (son of Amulf ), 132.
Literature, revival of, a.d. 1100- 1400, 264 ; connexion between it and imperialism, 280.
LiUDPBANO (Bishop of Cremona), his Hst of the accusations against John XII, 147 ; account of his embassy to the princess Theo- phano, 154.
LiUDPBAND (ELing of the Lom- bards), 42.
Lombard cities, 194 ; their victory over Frederick 1, 197.
Lombard kingdom, its extinction by Charles, king of the Franks, 45.
Lombards, arrival of the, A. D. 568, 32 ; harass Italy, 40 ; their aversion to the clergy, 40 ; the Popes in vain seek help from Byzantium against the, 41.
LoTHAB I (son of Lewis the Pious), 85, 445.
LiOTHAB II, election of, 182, 251.
LOTHAB (son of Hugh of Bur- gundy), 91.
Lotharingia or Lorraine, 86, 87, 166, 202, 377. 386.
Luneville, the Peace of, 399.
LUTHEB, 352.
M.
Majesty, the title of, 273 note.
Mallum, the popular assembly so called, 136.
Manuel Comnenus, 212.
Mario (Monte), 313.
Maximilian 1, 255, 343; character of his epoch, 344 ; events of his reign, 347 ; his title of " Ipipe- rator electus," 349, 443 ; his pro- posals to recover Burgundy and Italy, 361.
Mayfield, the popular assembly so called, 136.
Mediaeval art, rights of the Empire set forth in, 126.
Mediseval monuments, causes of the want of, in Bome, 319.
Mediseval theology, 102.
Metaphysics, influence of, on the theory of a World-State, 105.
Middle Ages, the, stabe of the hmnan mind in, 98 ; Empire- Church of, 117 ; effects pro- duced on reading the history of, 146 ; reverence for ancient forms and phrases in, 285 ; absence of the idea of change or progress in, 287; the city of Bome in, 297 ; barbarism of the aristo- cracy in, 319, 422 ; ambition and corruption of the clergy in the latter, 320 ; destruction of old buildings by the Bomans of, 323 ; existing relids of, 324 ; the Visible Church in the, 408 et seq. ; ferocity of the heroes of, 422 ; ways in which the Empire affected ike political institutions of, 423 ; the Empire of, 428.
Milan, Frederick I's dealings with the rebels of, 194 ; the rebuild- ing o^ 197 ; victory of Frederick II over, 318 ; pretensions of Charles YIII and Lewis XII of France on, 349.
Mohammedanism, rise of, 50.
Moissac, Chronicle of, its account of the coronation of Charles, 60, 92.
Mosaics in the churches of Bome, 325.
Mulleb, Johannes von, quoted, 391.
MtLnster, the treaty of ; see West- phalia.
N.
Naples, imperial authority in, 207, 226; pretensions of Charles VIII
460
INDEX.
and Iiewis XII of France on, 349.
Napoleon, as compared with Charles the Great, 82 ; Emperor of the West. 394; his belief that he was the successor of Charlemagne, 395 ; attitude of the Papacy towards, 396; his mission in Germany, 898.
Nationalities of Europe, the forma- tion of, 267; relations of the Empire to the, 431.
Nationality, struggles of the Teu- tonic Emperors against, 429.
Neo-Platonism, Alexandrian, effect of. 7.
Nicsea, first council o^ 25, 833 ; second council of, 71.
Nicholas I (Pope) and the case of Teutberga, 279.
Nicholas II (Pope") fixes a regular body to elect the Pope, 174.
Nicholas V (Pope), 309, 323, 345.
Nobles, the, 135 ; encroachments of the, 251.
O.
Occam, the English Franciscan, 241.
Odoacer, extinction of the West- em Empire by, a. d. 476, 28 ; forces Homulus Augustulus to resigfn, 28; his assumption of the title of Ring, 28 ; nature of his government, 29.
Optatus (Bishop of Milevis), his treatise Contra DonaJbUtaSy 14 note.
Oraini, the family of, 311.
Osnabriick, treaty of ; see West- phalia.
Ostrogoths, 26, 30 ; war between Belisarius and the, 301.
Otto I, the Great, his accession, 88 ; his first expedition into Italy, A. D. 951, 91 ; invitation sent by the Pope to, 91 ; his victory over the Hungarians,
92 ; his design for the recovery of Italy, 94 ; crowned king of Italy at Borne a. d. 962, 95; his coronation a favourable opening to sacerdotal claims, 170 ; causes of the revival of the Empire under, ,97; their ex- planation, 98; his coronation feast the inauguration of the Teutonic realm, 133 ; first re- sult of his coronation, 139 ; his position towards the Church, 140 ; significance of his changes of title, 140 ; nature of his rule, 142 ; the Germans made a single people by, 143 ; incidents which befel him in Rome, 146 ; in- quires into the character and manners of Pope John XII, 147 ; his letters to him, 148, 149 ; deposes him, 149 ; appoints Leo in his stead, 149 ; his sup- pression of the revolts of the Romans on account of John, 150, 151 ; his rule in Italy, 152 ; resumes Charles's plans of foreign conquest, 153; his policy to- wards Byzantium, 154; seeks for his heir the hand of the princess Theophano, 154 ; his policy towards the West Franks, 155 ; his Northern and Eastern conquests, 156; extent of his empire, 157; comparison be- tween it and that of Charles, 157; beneficial results of hi» rule, 158 ; how styled by Nice- phorus, 211.
Otto TI, 155 ; memoriala left by, in Rome, 317-
Otto III, his plans and ideas, 159 ; his intense religious belief in the Emperor's duties, 160 ; his rea- son for using the title ** Roma- norum Imperator," 1 61 ; hie early death, 162, 250 ; attributed to the revenge of Stephania, 162; styled *' the wonder of the world," 162 ; his burial at Aa-
INDEX.
461
cheD, 163 ; respect in which his life was so memorable, 163; compared with Frederick II, 228 ; his expostulation with the Koman people, 315 note ; me- morials left bj, in Home. 317. Otto IV, Pope Innocent Ill's ex- ertions in behalf of, 227 ; over- thrown by Innocent, 240; ex- planation of a curious seal of, 294 note.
P.
Panslavism, Russia's doctrine of,
407.
Papacy, the Teutonic reform of, 160; Frederick I's bad relations with, 184 ; causes of their quar- rel, 186, 186 ; Henry Ill's puri- fication of, 166, 224 ; growth of its power, 168; its relations with the Empire, 238 ; its con- dition after the dissolution of the Carolingian Empire, 304 ; its attitude towards Napoleon, 398 ; the parallel of the Koman Empire, 408.
Papacy and Empire, interdepen- dence of, 110 ; its coDsequences,
110, 111 ; struggle between them, 168 ; their relations, 170 ; compared as perpetuations of a name, 411 ; Gregory VII's simile between them, 412; 417.
Papal elections, veto on, granted
to the Emperor a. d. 963, 151,
171. Partition treaty of Verdun, a. d.
843, 85. Paschal II (Pope), his quarrel
with Henry V, 179. Patrician of the Bomans, import
of the title, 44 ; date at which it
was bestowed, 44 note. Patritius, secretary of Frederick
111, on the poverty of the Em- pire, 247.
Pa via, the Council of, and Charles the Bald, 171, 172.
PeraecQtion, Protestant, 366.
Petrarch, his feelings towards the Empire, 281 ; towards the city of Kome, 298 ; towards Bienzi, 308.
Philip of Hohenstaufen, contest between Otto of Brunswick and, 226 ; his assassination, 227.
Philosophy, scholastic, spread of, in the thirteenth century, 264.
PiPDf the Short appointed suc- cessor to Childeric, 43 ; twice rescues Kome from the Lom- bards, 43 ; receives the title of Patrician of the Bomans, 44 ; import of this title, 44 ; date at which it was bestowed, 44 note.
Pius VII (Pope), 396.
Placitum, the popular assembly so called, 136.
PoDiEBRAD, (George), (King of Bohemia), 245.
Poland, imperial authority in, 203 ; partition of, 382.
Political unity, idea of, upheld by the clergy, 104.
Politics, beginning of the existence of, 266.
Pope, the crown only lawfully im- posed by the, 240 ; parallel be- tween his functions aud those of the Emperor, 112 et seq. ; har- mony of their powers, 116.
Popes, emancipation of the, a.d. 476, 29 ; 41, 311, 312 ; appeal to the Franks for succour against the Lombards, 43 ; first instance of their leading a political move- ment, 43; ignoble motives of their policy, 47; their theory respecting the coronation of Charles, 63 ; their temporal power, 172 ; their position as international judges, 268; re- action against their pretensions, 269, 804 ; nature of the question at issue between the Emperors and, 426.
462
INBBX.
PoBCABO (Stephen), conspiracy of, 309.
Poverty of the Empire, 247.
Pnetaxation, the so-called right of, 251, 252.
Pragmatic Sanctions of Frederick II, 243.
Prague, University of, 260.
Priesthood, analogy between Knighthood and, 276.
Procession of the Holy Ghost, 93.
Protestant States, their conduct after the Reformation, 364.
Protestants of Germany, their al- liance with France, 358.
Public Peace and Imperial Cham- ber, establishment of the, 347.
R.
Reformation, Charles Y's attitude towards the, 354 ; influence of its spirit on the Empire, 352, 358 ; its effect on the doctrines regarding the Visible Church, 361 ; consequent effect upon the Empire, 362 ; its small imme- diate influence on political and religious liberty, 363 ; conduct of the Protestant States after the, 364 ; its influence on the name and associations of the Empire, 367.
Religion, influence of, in support- ing the Empire, 38 ; wars of, 364.
Renaissance, the Roman, 264. 333, 345.
'* Renovatio Romani Imperii,*' sig- nification of the seal bearing that legend, 112.
Rhine, tewns of the, 246 ; provi- sions of the Confederation of the, 400.
Richard I (King of England) pays homage to the Emperor Henry VI, 206 ; his release, 206.
Richard (Earl of ComwaJl), his double election with Alfonso X of Castile, 233, 252.
Richelieu, policy of, 371.
RiciMER (patrician), 27.
RiENZi, Petrarch^s letter te the Roman people respecting, 281 ; his character and career, 307.
Roman Empire, the, its condition in the second century, 5 ; obli teration of national distinctions in, 6 ; its internal weakness but commanding external position, 7, 8 ; solely supported by foreign aid, 17 ; reasons why the men of the fifth century refused to believe in its dissolution, 26 ; spell of its name, 26 ; impoi-tance of the year a.d. 476 in the histery of, 29 ; its influence in the Transalpine provinces, 32 ; in- fluence of religion and jurispru- dence in supporting, 33, 34 ; belief in, a.d. 796, 49 ; Charles's conception of, Roman, not Teu- tenic, 80 ; troubles of, afl«r the retreat of Amulf, a.d. 894, 86; motives for its revival under Otte, 92, 97; the ideal state supposed to be embodied in, 107; revived in a new character. 111 ; its connexion with religion, 119; its rights proved from the Bible, 121 ; its anti-national character, 130 ; ite union with the German kingdom, 132; dissimilarity be- tween the two, 13f8 ; results of the union, 139 ; its pretensions in Hungary, 202 ; in Poland, 203 ; in Denmark, 203 ; in France, 204 ; in Sweden, 204 ; in' Spain, 205; in England, 205 ; in Naples. 207 ; in Venice, 208 ; in the East, 208 ; the epithet 'Holy' added to, by Frederick I, 219 ; its fall with Frederick II, 231 ; Italy lost to, 232.; change in its position, 235 ; its continuance due to its connexion with the German kingdom, 235, 236 ; its rela- tions with the Papacy, 238 ;
INDEX.
463
its financial distress, 246 ; theory of, in the fourteenth and fif- teenth centuries, 262 ; its duties as an international judge and mediator, 270 ; why an interna- tional power, 274 ; illustrations, 275 ; doctrine of its rights and functions never carried out in fact, 280 ; end of its history in Italy, 291 ; relation between it and the city, 328 ; reaches its lowest point in Frederick III*s reign, 833 ; change in its cha- racter, 341 ; efPects of the Re- formation upon the, 852, 362-; its influence upon the name and associations of the, 367 ; causes of the continuance of the, 380 ; its use in preserving the balance of power, 381 ; its posi- tion in Europe, 382 ; its last phase, 389; signs of its ap- proaching fiill, 393 ; its end, 401 ; the desire for its re- establishment, 402 ; unwilling- ness of certain states, 402 ; sum- mary of its nature and results, 404 ; claims to represent the, by Austria, 406 ; by France, 406 ; by Russia, 407 ; by Greece, 407 ; by the Turks, 407 ; parallel be- tween the Papacy and the, 408, 417 ; never truly mediaeval, 412 ; sense in which it was Roman, 41 3; its condition in the tenth cen- tury, 413 ; its influence on Ger- many, 418 ; Austria as heir of the, 421 ; its bearing on the progress of Europe, 423 ; ways in which it aflected the poli- tical institutions of the Middle Ages, 423 ; its influence upon modem jurisprudence, 424 ; upon the history of the Church, 426 principles adverse to the, 429 change marked by its fall, 430 its relations to the nationalities ofEurope,431. (/See Holy Roman Empire and Rome.)
Romans, revolts of the, at the ex- pulsion of Pope John XTI, 160, 161; Otto's vigorous measures against, 161 ; their revolt from the Iconoclastic Emperors of the East, 303 ; the title of King of the, 446.
Romanism or Catholicity, 101, 115.
Rome, lingering influences of her Church and Law, 33, 34 ; under Arnold of Brescia, 193; imita- tions of old, 284, 285 ; in the Middle Ages, 297 ; the modem traveller in, 300, 312 ; causes of her rapid decay, 301 ; peculi- arities of her position, 302 ; her internal history from the sixth to the twelfth century, 303 ; her condition in the ninth and tenth centuries, 303 ; causes of the failure of the struggle for inde- pendence in, 309 ; her internal condition, 310 : her people, 810 ; her nobility, 310 ; her bishop, 311 ; the Emperor, 311 ; the Emperors' visits to, 312 ; me- morials of Otto III in. 317; of Otto II, 317; of Frederick II, 318 ; causes of the want of me- diaeval monuments in, 319 ; ten- dency of her builders to adhere to the ancient manner, 321 ; her modem churches, 324 ; changed aspect of the modem city, 326 ; analogy between her architec- ture and the civil and ecclesias- tical constitution, 326 ; preser- vation of an antique character in both, 327; relation between city and empire, 328 ; feelings of modem Italians towards, 330 ; perpetuation of the name of, 406 ; parallel instances, 406 ; Hildebert's lines contrasting the past and present of, 448. {See Roman Empire.) Romulus Augustulus, his resig- nation at Odoacer's bidding, 28.
4G4
INDEX.
Rudolf of Hapsburg, 234, 241, 243, 244 ; financial distress un- der, 246 ; Schiller's description of bis coronation feast, 254 note, 289.
Rudolf II, 369.
Rudolf of Swabia, 178.
Rudolf III (King of Burgundy), bis proposal to bequeatb Bur- gundy to Henry II, 165.
Russia, ber claim to represent tbe Roman Empire, 407.
»
S.
Saladin (tbe Sultan), Frederick
I*s letter to, 208, 209. Santa Maria Novella at Florence,
fresco in, illustrative of tbe
rigbts of tbe Empire, 128. Saxon Emperors, 145. Saxony, extinction of the dukedom
of, 244. Scbleswig, its annexation by Otto,
156 ; its relations to tbe Empire,
440. Scholastic philosophy, spread of,
in tbe thirteenth century, 264. Seftihius Sevebus, concentration
of power in bis bands, 5, 6. Sebgius IV (Pope), 250 note. Seven Years' War, 388. Sicambri, probably tbe chief source
of the Frankish nation, 37* Sicily, imperial authority in, 207,
226. Sioismund (tbe Burgundian king),
bis desire to preserve tbe insti- tutions of the Empire, 19. SioiSMUND (Emperor), bis visit to
Henry V, 206 ; at the Council
of Constance, 280, 333. Sbnony, measures taken against,
174. Slavic races, tbe, 85, 156, 288,418. Snialkaldic league, the, 856. Southern Italy, 164. Spain, Otto's position towards.
156, 157; authority not exer-
cised by any Emperor in, 205 ;
compared with Germany, 335. Stxphania (widow of Crescentius),
162. Swabia, extinction of the dukedom
of, 244 ; tbe towns of, 246, 349 ;
theory of tbe Emperors of tbe
bouse of, respecting tbe corona- tion of Charles, 63. Sweden, improbability of imperial
pretensions to, 204. Swiss Confederation, tbe, a.d.
1648, 339. Switzerland lost to tbe Empire^
A.D. 1313, 338, 377.
T.
Teutbeboa (wife of Lotbar), tbe famous case of, 279.
Teutonic race, political character of the, 416.
Teutscbland, origin of tbe name, 315; its separation from Welscb- land, 349.
Theodebebt (son of Clovis), bis desire to preserve the institu- tions of tbe Empire, 19.
Thbodobio tbe Ostrogoth, • bis attempt to establish a national monarchy in Italy, 30 ; its failure, 31 ; prosperity under bis reign, 31.
Theodosius (tbe Emperor), bis abasement before St. Ambrose, 13.
Theophano (princess), 152.
Thirty Years' War, 369 ; its un- satisfactory results, 373 ; its sub- stantial advantage to the Ger- man ptinces, 373.
Thomas (St.); bis statement re- specting the election of E^pe-
■ • rors, 250.
Tithes first enforced by Charles tbe Great, 74. i
Titles, change of, 140, 349, 442. ^
Tortona, Frederick I's dealing with tbe rebels of, 194.
INDEX,
465
Transftlpine proTinces, influence of the Elmpire in, 32.
"Translation of the Empire," 120 ; Gregory VI 1*8 silence about the, 240; summary of the contro- versy, 240 note.
Transubstantiation, 360 note.
Turks, the, 335 ; their claim to represent the Koman Empire, 407.
TuBPiN (Archbishop), 57 note.
U.
University of Prague, foundation
of, 260. Urban FV (Pope) on the right of
choosing the Homan king, 252.
V.
Venice, her attitude, 189; impe- rial pretensions towards, 208 ; maintains her independence, 208 ; war with Maximilian, 350.
Verdun, partition treaty o( a.d. 843, 85.
Vienna, Congress of, 402.
ViLLANi (Matthew), his idea of the Teutonic Emperors, 336 ;
his etymology of Guelf and
Ghibelme, 386 note. Visible Church ; see Church. Visigothic kings of Spain, the
Empire's rights admitted by
the, 32.
W.
Waldemab the Dane, 204.
Wenzel of Bohemia, 245, 246.
Western Empire, its last days, 26 ; its extinction by Odoacer A.D. 476, 28 ; its restoration, 37 ; denounced by the Eastern Empire as an imposture, 70.
Westphalia, the Peace of, 372 ; its advantages to France, 377 ; to Sweden, 377 ; its importance in imperial history, 377.
WiCKLiFFE, excitement caused by his writings, 265.
WoiTECH (St. Adalbert), 297.
World-Monarchy, the idea of a, 99 ; influence of metaphysics upon the theory, 105.
World-Keligion, the idea of a, 99 ; coincides with the World-Em- pire, 100.
Worms, Concordat of, a.d. 1122, 179 ; Diet of, a. d. 1521, 352, 369.
^'
t *
Hh
^-
/
6>*^Y
3
\
^^
X-^d ^